534 THE ANAEROBIC BACTERIA 
3. Agglutinins.— M^emherg and Seguin^ have found that the injection 
of animals with massive cultures of the gas bacillus (organisms, not 
filtrates) will lead to the formation of specific agglutinins which will 
clump the gas bacillus in dilutions of from 1 to 500 to 1 to 2000. 
Other observers, however, Gaehtgens,- Mcintosh and Fildes,^ BulP and 
Simonds'* have been unsuccessful in obtaining agglutination. 
4. Bacteriolysins.—yicCsimY>he\\^ and Korentchevsky^ state that the 
injection of animals with B. welchii leads to the formation of anti- 
bodies in their serum which will specifically- fix complement in the 
presence of an antigen derived from the homologous organism. This 
observation has not been entirely confirmed by Rocchi.^ It is not 
improbable that the variations observed in the production of soluble 
poison, agglutinins, hemolysins, and other specific substances, may 
stand in direct relation to this apparent variation in complement- 
fixation. In other words, the gas bacillus is to be regarded rather as a 
group which exhibits serological differentiation into types than as a 
specific entity. 
Bacteriological Diagnosis. —il/or/j/^o/or/iy.— The organisms are Gram- 
positive bacilli, rather thick, moderately long, with slightly rounded 
ends, a slight tendency to form pairs, but almost never to form chains. 
Few involution forms are encountered either in infected tissues or 
experimentally killed animals. These characteristics distinguish B. 
welchii from Mbrion septique and B. oedematiens, the two next impor- 
tant incitants of gas gangrene. No sporulation in the animal body, 
and no motility. 
r^/Z/iira/.— Inoculation of material from pathological tissue or exu- 
dates into deep milk tubes (freshly boiled to expel oxygen) will lead 
to the characteristic "stormy fermentation," in a large percentage of 
cases. If the material is from the intestines, or any source other than 
the tissues of the body,^ the milk should be heated to 80° C. for twenty 
minutes after inoculation and prior to incubation to destroy vegetative 
organisms of all kinds. A Gram stain prepared from the milk culture 
the next day will reveal organisms of the characteristic morphology. 
Vibrion septique, which resembles the gas bacillus in many respects, 
both morphologically and culturally, does not give rise to a typical 
stormy fermentation in milk, at least during the first eighteen to 
twenty-four hours of incubation. 
Material may be injected into an ear vein of a rabbit, which is killed 
after about five minutes. Upon incubation the animal shows the 
typical gas edema (Welch-Nuttall Test) after a few hours. ^^ Smears 
1 La Gangrene Gazeuse, Paris, 1917. 
2 Centralbl. f. Bakteriol., orig., 1917, 80, 166. 
3 British Med. Res. Comm., Series 12. " New York Med. Jour., 1917, 106, 821. 
^ Monograph 5, Rockefeller Institute, September 27, 1915. 
' Loc. cit. 
' Ann. Inst. Pasteur, 1909, 23, 91. » Riforma med., 1917, 33, .387. 
' It will be remembered that Bacillus welchii, in common with practically all spore 
forming organisms, does not sporulate in the tissues. 
I" See page 527. 
