390 
THOMPSON YATES LABORATORIES REPORT 
By comparison with the cultural features of the B. enteritidis group included in 
Table II, it will be seen that the bacilli are, so far as can be determined from the 
description, in nearly every case, members of that group. The bacillus described by 
Kurth 23 may be an exception, because of the terminal clotting in milk. It is greatly 
to be regretted that so many of the reports fail to give a record of the action of the 
bacillus described in lactose media. The necessity of recording this action as a means 
of differential diagnosis was emphasized as early as 1885, by Buchner, 3 and although 
it has been repeatedly referred to by other writers, the persistent failure to report on 
it is a source of difficulty to any one attempting to classify a given bacillus. 
The bacilli isolated by Gwyn 14 and Cushing 5 have been shown by these writers 
to belong to the B. enteritidis group. In this group are also included by Durham 8 — 
(a) Various bacilli isolated in epidemics of meat-poisoning, both on the 
Continent and in England ; 
(J?) The so-called gas-producing typhoid bacilli of various observers ; 
(f) The bacilli isolated in certain cases of septicaemic typhoid fever. 
The bacilli isolated by Schottmuller, 35 ' 36 in six of his cases, clearly belong here 
too. For although the important lactose reaction is not recorded, nevertheless, the 
milk reaction is typical of the B. enteritidis group ; as has been shown by Cushing, 5 
who worked with several members of the group and found that they all turned milk 
alkaline after a period of transient acidity. 
It is more difficult to place the bacillus isolated by Kurth. 23 The terminal 
clotting of milk suggests that lactose would have been fermented, if tried ; if so, 
the organism would most certainly be a form of B. coli. So few, however, of the 
B. enteritidis group have been studied in milk over protracted periods of time that 
it is impossible to say definitely what change might occur in some of the members.* 
Kurth's bacillus ('bacillus bremensis febris gastricae') evidently belongs, even 
though allied to B. enteritidis, to Group F, Order I, Division II, of Durham's 9 
elaborate classification, published in 1901. He speaks of this group as having 
colon-like morphology and motility, and as being ' Dextroso-non-lactoso-fractors ' ; 
milk is slightly clotted by them eventually. 
It is worthy of special note that Schottmuller should have been so abundantly 
successful in isolating the aetiological bacillus from the blood of his cases. He reports 
that in thus examining, in a routine way, the cases of typhoid fever admitted to the 
Allgemeines Krankenhaus in Hamburg, St. Georg, B. typhosus was isolated from the 
blood in eighty per cent, of the cases in 1899, and in eighty-four per cent, in 1900. 
It was during the course of such routine examinations that he isolated the bacilli 
described, in one case as early as the fourth day of the disease. 
* Thus MacConkey and Hill (27) in their elaborate tables recently published, record the cultural relations of six 
members of the B. enteritidis group {i.e., B. enteritidis, B. paracolon, B. cholerae suum, B. icteroides, B. psittacosis, B. of 
epidemic jaundice), and report that all of them acidify milk in forty-eight hours. Although their statement is literally true- — 
that for forty-eight hours cultures of this group in milk are acid — still it is a recognized fact that this acidity is only transient, 
and that one of the distinctive features of the B. enteritidis group is that it turns milk alkaline after forty-eight hours. The 
writer has repeatedly tested the six cultures used by MacConkey and Hill, and every one of them has turned milk strongly 
alkaline after forty-eight hours ; this alkalinity persists after many weeks of continuous incubation at 37°C. 
