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(c) (10) Ten samples, Nos. 13, 20, 21, 22, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, or 25.5
per cent., caused in one or both of the animals chronic multiple
abscesses in the spleen, which organ was at the same time
enlarged. In the pus of these splenic purulent foci invariably
and without fail copious presence of a microbe was found, which
in all and every respect corresponds to the Bacillus enteritidis
Gaertner, that is a microbe which has been shown to be associated
with certain forms of acute gastro-enteritis and diarrhoea. I
have subjected the microbe isolated from the splenic purulent
nodules to every test which differentiates the Bacillus enteritidis
Gaertner from the group of microbes constituting the colityphoid
group, and I have found that the splenic microbe
coincides with the Gaertner group, and only with this. Cultures
were made in gelatine streak, gelatine shake, Agar streak, broth,
phenol broth, blood serum, taurocholate of soda litmus glucose,
lactose peptone litmus, Agar surface plates, gelatine surface
plates, neutral red broth, and steamed potato, and in all these
the splenic microbe grows in exactly the same manner as our
typical laboratory Bacillus Gaertner.
In very minute doses (a fraction of a small colony of a recent Agar culture)
injected subcutaneously into guinea-pigs, either of the two microbes causes
acute septicemic infection and death, and with the same symptoms. But of
decisive importance as to identity of the two microbes were the following
tests:—
(a) The splenic microbe produces alkali in litmus milk just like
Bacillus Gaertner, the litmus milk becoming slowly and gradually
blue to slate colour, the milk retaining its fluid character.
(b) The splenic microbe produces on Drigalski medium blue colonies
just like the Bacillus Gaertner and Bacillus typhosus.
(c) The splenic microbe is possessed of numerous thin long wavy to
spiral flagella just like Bacillus Gaertner and Bacillus typhosus.
(d) The splenic microbe in an emulsion from a recent culture becomes
agglutinated in a conspicuous manner and instantaneously with
the blood serum of rabbit which had been previously repeatedly
injected with culture of our laboratory Bacillus Gaertner.
I consider these last four tests as decisive, and as removing the splenic
microbe just as the Bacillus Gaertner from other known coli bacilli.
Both the splenic microbe and the Bacillus Gaertner are in morphological
respects identical, being oval to cylindrical very mobile bacilli, gram negative.
That in our experimental animals the result of injection with the corresponding
milk samples was of a chronic character, viz., multiple purulent
nodules, is readily explained by assuming that the microbe was present only