A Study of the Bacteriology of Pertussis, with Special Reference to the Agglutination of the Patient's Blood

Investigations on the subject of the etiology of pertussis by means of microscopic and cultural studies of the sputum have resulted in the finding and description of protozoa by Deichler, Kurloff, and Behla, of staphylococci by Moncorvo and Silva Aronja, of streptococci by Mircoli, of diplococci by Ritter and his pupil Buttermilch, and of bacilli. The last may be divided into three groups: First, a motile bacillus growing "colon-like" upon all ordinary media and forming endogenous spores, described by Affanassieff in i887, and found later by Szemtschenko and by Wendt. Second, the bacillus found by Czeplewski and Hensel, and also by Koplik, in r897, growing as a small, poled bacillus upon agar, L6ffter's serum, gelatine, and in broth. Zusch, Cavasse, and Arnheim all confirmed Czeplewski's work. The ttfird group comprises the influenza-like bacilli described by Spengler in z897 and by Jochmann and Krause in z9oI and again in I9o 3, when they reported the bacilli present in sixty samples of pertussis sputum and in the lungs of twenty-three pertussis patients who died of broncho-pneumonia. They called the organism Bacillus pertussis, Eppendorf. It was not found in cases of ordinary broncho-pneumonia, nor in the sputum from other than pertussis cases. Spengler later gave it as his opinion that the description of the sputum smears by Czeplewski and Hensel showed that these observers had been dealing with the same organisms as himself, but that, having failed to use hmmoglobin agar, the influenza-like organisms were lost and only a contaminating pseudo-diphtheria bacillus grew. The fact that