Considerable interest was recently aroused by the report of Vipond1 regarding the specific organism of scarlet fever. The author claims to have secured a rapidly-growing spore-forming bacillus from the lymphatic glands of seven consecutive patients with scarlet fever. The injection of broth cultures of this organism is reported as having produced scarlet-fever in five monkeys and two rabbits; that the same bacilli were secured from the lymph-glands of these animals, and further, that another monkey and a rabbit contracted the disease by contact with these animals. In other words, the postulates of Koch were fulfilled to the letter.
His report was startling to those of us who have been culturing the glands of scarlet-fever patients for some time. To determine the cause of scarlet-fever has been the aim of many workers and not a few of these included the glands in their investigations. Klein claimed many years ago that