A NEW PATHOGENIC BACILLUS ISOLATED FROM 
A CASE DIAGNOSED AS TYPHOID FEVER 
WITH A SUMMARY OF FOURTEEN SIMILAR CASES 
HITHERTO REPORTED 
BY 
EDWARD H. HUME, B.A. (Yalen.), M.D. (Johns Hopkins) 
J. W. Garrett Fellow in Pathology 
' The possibility of other infective agents (colon, paracolon) causing typhoid-like 
symptoms, may explain many "negative reactions in typhoid," and correspondingly 
enhances the value of the serum-reaction.' 
With these words Gwyn,' 5 in 1898, concluded the report of a remarkable case 
of fever, clinically like typhoid ; and at the same time gave expression to a belief 
which is gaining ground among investigators of typhoid fever. 
It may not be out of place to contrast, at the outset, the wide range of. meaning 
of the term typhoid-like when applied to bacilli, with its limitation when used in 
reference to clinical cases. Of the latter only a comparatively few are on record ; 
while the number of typhoid-like bacilli is legion. 
I. Definition of the Term 'Typhoid-like Bacillus' 
Germano and Maurea," in 1893, began their important paper with the state- 
ment that by typhoid-like bacilli they meant those organisms, motile or not, whose 
colonies on gelatin plates resembled those of B. typhosus. Their paper shows, how- 
ever, that they must have regarded such similarity as a very superficial criterion, for 
they pointed out that in order to be really like B. typhosus, an organism must not 
produce gas in sugar media, nor clot milk. 
Losener, 24 in 1895, summed up mostly clearly the cultural relations which must 
be fulfilled by a true B. typhosus, and his cultural standard remains practically 
unaltered to-day. 
A new criterion was introduced, however, with the discovery of the serum-reaction 
in 1896, and now no organism can be identified with B. typhosus, unless in addition 
to cultural agreement with a known strain of that bacillus, it is readily agglutinated 
