CLOSTRIDIUM PUTRIFICUM II. MORPHOLOGICAL, CULTURAL AND BIOCHEMICAL STUDY

Interest in this peculiar but extremely important organism has increased within the past few years. Since Sturges and Rett-ger (1919) brought out again the outstanding features of this anaerobe, among them that of delayed development in pure culture, investigators have expressed widely different views. An example of the uncertainty concerning the entity of the organism in question is given by the British Medical Research Committee. In their first report on the classification and study of the anaerobes found in war wounds (Special Report Series, No. 12, 1917) certain cultural reactions attributed to it are given rather fully and there is every reason to assume that the com-mittee at that time believed in the existence of a definite species which they were calling Bacillus putrificus. Later (1919) in their Special Report Series, No. 39., they do not make reference to it as a distinct species, but infer that "many of the cultures of B. putrificus, so-called, are really mixtures of B. cochlearius or B. tertius with B. sporogenes. " They make no effort to list the cultural characters of the organism, and simply offer a short review of the work of previous investigators, which does not identify it in any way as a distinct species. The Lister Insti-tute (London) does not list cultures of C. putrificum in its National Collection of Type Cultures (1922) and the writers were unable to procure from them any cultures of this organism for compara-tive studies. Hall has, in a way, shown equal uncertainty in regard to the identity of C. putrificum. In the differential key to the sporulat