332 
F. C. WILKINSON. 
that the hands of farmers and gardeners are constantly soiled 
with such earth without their contracting tetanus. This bacil¬ 
lus was discovered by Nicolaier. In the year 1890, Friedlander 
communicated to the Medical Society of Berlin the results of his 
experiments with his pneumococcus; the following are the 
results of one of his experiments : The pneumococci were mixed 
with distilled water, and injected through the thoracic walls 
into the lungs of eleven guinea-pigs, six of said guinea-pigs 
died, and post-mortem being made on their bodies, the lesions of 
pneumonia were found. Gamelia obtained the following results 
from inoculations into the blood of sheep and dogs. He in¬ 
oculated four sheep and twelve dogs with this coccus, and 
the following is the results of his experiments : Three dogs 
died in nine days and one sheep in fifteen days. On mak¬ 
ing post-mortem examinations on their bodies, it was found 
that they had passed through various stages of red and grey he¬ 
patization of the lungs. The experiments of Gamelia go far to¬ 
ward settling the question in a definite manner and considered 
in connection with those of Talmon and Salvioli, and the ex¬ 
tended researches of Frankel, Weichselbaum and Netter, leave 
little doubt that this is the true infectious agent in acute lobar 
pneumonia. 
Morphology .—Short rods w'ith rounded ends, united in pairs or 
chains of 4, and surrounded by a transparent capsule, stains read¬ 
ily with aniline colors. In preparations from the blood of an 
inoculated animal stained by an aniline color, the capsule ap¬ 
pears as an unstained envelope surrounding the stained cell. 
A slide cultivation may be prepared as follows : Gelatinized 
meat infusion, which has been rendered sterile by heat, is poured 
on a sterilized glass slide, and allowed to solidify. A sterilized 
platinum wire is then dipped into a growth of the organism 
which is to be examined, and drawn rapidly over the surface of 
the preparation on the slide. The bacteria are sown at inter¬ 
vals along the track of the wire, and as they grow, form charac¬ 
teristic colonies, and may be observed in process of growth under 
the higher powers of the microscope. 
