NEW BACILLUS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 7, 9 January 1925, Page 5

NEW BACILLUS

DISCOVERY FOLLOWS-1 MOTORING ACCIDENT. Dr. Claudius, chief physician of the IFrederiksberg Hospital at Copenhagen, cultivated, and experimented with a new bacillus of a rather sinister kind, writes a correspondent of the "Daily Mail." Last year a man knocked by a motor-car was taken to the hospital, where he, died from probably cerebrospinal menijpgitis. On the skull two fractures were found, one reaching to the temple^, the other to the nose. 'When ' ..signs of meningitis had shown them-! selves one of the physicians, Dr.: Levison, made a spinal cord puncture, some pus from which was sent to the laboratory of the hospital. Dr. Claudius examined this pus and found to his surprise that it did not contain the bacillus of meningitis but another ons which he had never seen. He cultivated the bacillus, and in experiments on rabbits, birds, rats, and/guinea-pigsjiound it gave almost all the same reactions as plague, chicken-choleray and hog-chol-era, lacking, however, a few of the most characteristic. He was therefore inclined to class the bacillus as a link between the plague bacillus and the groups of disease the bacilli of which, were discovered by Pasteur. The bacillus assumes different shapes according to the -various substrata in which it is cultivated. • , "What practical results this discovery may lead to. it is impossible to forecast," said a bacteriologist. Meningitis is caused by different microbes. The newly discovered microbe may prove to be an additional source of trouble."