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PATHOGENIC BACTERIA OF THE HUMAN MOUTH. 259

eontuined in great numbers in the heart-blood of the dead mice.
In sections of the organs they were found within the capillaries,
but generally in isolated heaps, and not more plentifully in the
lungs than in other organs. By means of minute quantities of
blood it was possible to transfer the disease to forty to fifty gen-
erations of mice; death ensued more rapidly than from the bac-
terium described first, often after but eighteen, at most after
forty hours.
"Rabbits were completely refractory. Culture experiments
yielded an increase of bacteria only in the blood transferred to the
first medium ; in further inoculations no increase ever occurred."
While experimenting with the bacteria of the gangrenous
pulp [Dental Cosmos, April, 1888) I discovered a microbe, which,
subcutaneously injected into mice, excited a gangrenous process.
Twenty-four hours after the infection a pea-sized swelling had
formed, which when lanced emitted a stinking pus mixed with
gas-bubbles. By inoculating small quantities of this matter
from one animal to another the infection was transferred through
several generations. The bacteria cultivated from such abscesses
did not possess this characteristic effect, from which fact I con-
cluded that the specific bacterium is uncultivable.
I do not doubt that continued study will discover other mem-
bers of this group of uncultivable pathogenic mouth-bacteria.

2. Cultivable Pathogenic Mouth-Bacteria.

a. Micrococcus of Sputum Septiccemia.
Of the many pathogenic bacteria which have of late been ol)-
tained in pure culture from the mouth, the micrococcus of sputum
septicaemia is perhaps the most important. It is probably the
same micro-organism which Pasteur, Raynaud, Lannelongue,
Vulpian, Moriggia and Marchiafava, Sternberg, Klein, myself,
and many others had to do with in the experiments on the infec-
tious nature of healthy as well as diseased human saliva.
Klein ^'"^ was, it appears, the first who succeeded in obtaining a
pure culture of the coccus of sputum septicemia, using blood-
serum and agar-agar peptone at 38° C.