143 
NOTE ON THE BEHAVIOUR OF SPIROCHAETAE 
IN ACANTHI A LECTULARIA. 
By GEORGE H. F. NUTTALL, F.R.S. 
Fellow of Magdalene College , Quick Professor of Biology in the 
University of Cambridge. 
A popular belief prevails in Russia that the bug Acanthia lectularia 
plays a part in the spread of relapsing fever. Fltigge (1891) however 
appears to have been the first scientific writer to suppose that vermin 
might spread the disease. This view was also held by Tictin (1897) 
who considered that man may become infected by (a) being bitten by 
bugs which had previously fed on blood containing Spirochaeta 
obermeieri, or (b) by his crushing such bugs and infecting himself with 
the spirochaetes through lesions in the skin induced by scratching. 
Tictin injected the gut-contents of infected bugs which had recently fed 
on a relapsing fever patient into monkeys and infected them. When 
the bugs were crushed 48 hours after feeding on infected blood their 
contents did not produce the disease in monkeys. 
Karlinski (1902) observed Spirochaeta obermeieri in 120 bugs 
examined during the prevalence of relapsing fever in Bosnia. The bugs 
were collected in houses where cases of relapsing fever occurred. The 
spirochaetes retained their motility in the bugs for 30 days after the 
initial feeding, but later they appeared to be degenerating. (The 
examination of fleas and lice gave negative results.) Schaudinn, not 
long before his death, informed me that he had observed an even longer 
persistence of the spirochaetes in bugs. Christy (1902), working in 
Bombay, placed bugs in the beds of relapsing fever patients and after¬ 
wards allowed twelve of the bugs to bite him, one bug biting him each 
day on twelve successive days. He did not however acquire relapsing fever. 
Breinl, Kinghorn and Todd (1906, p. 113) do not state that they made 
