The dysentery bacillus group and the varieties which should be included in it / Wm. H. Park and Katharine R. Collins and Mary E. Goodwin.

  • Park, William Hallock, 1863-1939.
Date:
1904
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The dysentery bacillus group and the varieties which should be included in it / Wm. H. Park and Katharine R. Collins and Mary E. Goodwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Flexner Manila culture. During the same summer Park and Dunham isolated a bacillus from a severe case of dysentery occurring during an epidemic at Seal Harbor, Mt. Desert, Maine, which they showed to differ1 from the Shiga bacillus in that it produced indol in peptone solution and differed in agglutinating characteristics. They considered it at first to be identical with the Philippine culture given them by Flexner, but in January, 1903, it was shown by Park to be a distinct variety. Martini and Lentz2 published in December of 1902 the results of their work. They showed that the Shiga type of bacilli obtained from several separate epidemics in Europe agreed with the original Shiga culture in that it did not fer- ment the alcohol mannite. The cultures of this type agreed with each other in agglutinating characteristics. The bacilli from Flexner, Strong, Kruse, and others, which differed from the Shiga culture in their agglutinums, were all found to fer- ment mannite. Martini and Lentz, therefore, concluded that the Shiga bacillus was the true dysentery type and that the mannite fermenting variety or varieties might be mere sapro- phytes, or perhaps might be a factor in the less characteristic cases. In January, 1903, Hiss3 and Russell showed that a bacillus isolated by them from a dysenteric stool differed from Shiga’s bacillus in the same characteristics as mentioned by Martini and Lentz. At the beginning of the summer of 1903, therefore, it was recognized by many bacteriologists that there were in dysen- teric stools at least two distinct types of bacilli: the true Shiga type and the type fermenting mannite and producing indol. It had also been established that the second type contained more than one variety. The German observers considered the Shiga type as the only one which had established its causal relation to acute dysentery, while the American observers generally considered ] N.Y. University Bulletin of the Med. Sciences, October, 1902, page 187. 2 Zeitschrift f. Hygiene u. Infectionskrank ,1902, xli, 540 and 559. s Medical News, 1903, lxxxii, 289.