HISTORY OF THE ORGANISM 



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bro-spinal meningitis first reported in 1890, and x^oa's meningococcus and the 

 Diplococcus pneumonieB, in which it was decided that Bonome's organism was 

 the pneumococcus, but the confusion was increased by Bordoni, Uffreduzzi 

 regarding D. intracellular is as a variety of D. pneimonicB. 



This unhappy condition was accentuated in 1895, when Jaeger, while study- 

 ing a regimental epidemic of fourteen cases occurring in Stuttgart, found the 

 pneumococcus in two cases, a streptococcus in one case, and in eleven cases 

 an intracellular Gram-positive diplococcus morphologically resembling the 

 gonococcus, producing turbidity in broth, and forming short or even at times 

 long chains, while it retained its Gram-positive character in cultures. It grew 

 well on gelatine at the temperature of the laboratory, and preserved its vitality 

 during fourteen days or more on artificial media. He concluded that this 

 organism was Weichselbaum's D. intra cellularis, and in this unfortunate con- 

 clusion he remained unopposed for years, and was supported by Heubner 

 in Berlin in 1896, who not merel}'- was tne first to obtain a coccus from the 

 cerebro-spinal fluid during life, but who produced a fatal meningitis in goats 

 with this germ, which at the time was considered to be an important experiment, 

 as an epizootic meningitis was present in horses and horned cattle in Germany; 

 further, he proposed the name meningococcus for this organism, notwith- 

 standing the fact that Bonom6 had already used it for the pneumococcus 

 mentioned above. 



This meningitis cerebro-spinalis enzootica, or epizootic cerebro-spinal 

 meningitis, is often called the Borna disease, because of the attention paid to 

 a malignant outbreak in horses at Borna in 1894, 



It is obvious that it must be of the greatest importance to definitely settle 

 the question as to whether (as is generally believed) the two diseases are quite 

 separate, or whether there is some relationship between the human and some 

 undefined fraction of the animal complaint. 



Thus we see that confusion has arisen not only between a disease seen in 

 animals, but also between two human organisms. 



Jaeger and Heubner's results were more or less confirmed by Holdheim, 

 Petersen, Urban {1897), Rameny (1898), Vanzetti (1901), and many others, 

 while Kiefer, Kister, Kischensky, and Berdach and Froz supported Weichsel- 

 baum, and so great a confusion arose between the Gram-negative Diplococcus 

 intracellularis Weichselbaum, 1887, and the Gram-positive coccus of Jaeger 

 and Heubner, which is also known as D. crassus von Lingelsheim, 1906, that 

 every coccus found in connection with the meninges was considered to be a 

 true meningococcus. 



In 1898 Still showed that posterior basic meningitis was associated with an 

 organism like D. intracellularis, and Councilman, Mallory, and Wright obtained 

 Weichselbaum's coccus from thirty-one cases of the disease, while Faber in 

 1900 found the same organism in an epidemic in Copenhagen, and Canuet in 

 the same year showed that it was an obligatory aerobe. 



Pfaundler in 1899 recognized both the Weichselbaum type and the Jaeger- 

 Heubner type, and in this he was supported by Hunter and Nuttall and by 

 Lazarus-Barlow in 1901, in which year Albrecht and Ghon, reporting upon 

 the 1898 epidemic at Trefail in Steiermark, not merely confirmed Weichsel- 

 baum's researches,but were the first to obtain the organism by cultural methods 

 from the naso-pharynx of cases of the disease, an observation which is now 

 of almost daily occurrence, although we are still uncertain as to the proportion 

 of cases which become permanent carriers. They also obtained Gram-negative 

 cocci in the throats of fifteen healthy persons who were contacts with cases, 

 and in one such person the meningococcus was identified by cultural tests. 



In 1902-03 Bettencourt and Fran9a, in Portugal, found the meningococcus 

 to be present 271 times in 274 cases of cerebro-spinal meningitis, and Lepierre 

 in 1903 described a meningococcus which, although originally Gram-negative, 

 became Gram-positive, and the same year saw the Meningococcal polemic 

 between Jaeger, as representing the German school, and Weichselbaum, 

 Albrecht, and Ghon on behalf of the Austrian schools, as a result of which 

 Weichselbaum's organism became firmly established. 



In 1905 Kob and Weyl wrote on the subject of Gram-negative and Gram- 



