Note on the smegma bacillus : its diagnostic importance and its cultivation / by Albert S. Grünbaum.

  • Grünbaum, Albert Sidney.
Date:
[1897]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Note on the smegma bacillus : its diagnostic importance and its cultivation / by Albert S. Grünbaum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    l ^ to/aJlMz* Gih^r. Reprinted from The Lancet, January 9,1897. NOTE ON THE SMEGMA BACILLUS : ITS DIAGNOSTIC IMPORTANCE AND ITS CULTIVATION. By ALBERT S. GRUNBAUM, M.A., M.B. Cantab., M.R.C.P. Lond. (FROM THE CLINIC NOTHNAGEL, VIENNA, JUNE, 1896). The smegma bacillus was discovered in 1885 by Matter- stock,1 and by Alvarez and Tavel,2 independently. During the succeeding three years a large number of papers was written on the relations of the bacilli of smegma, of syphilis, and of tubercle, but since then the subject has been comparatively neglected. Although even at that time some writers indicated the possibility of its occurrence in the urine, and of its being mistaken for the tubercle bacillus, a possibility emphasised by Lustgarten and Mannaberg3 when they found the smegma bacillus to be a normal inhabi- tant of the male urethra, the question does not seem to have been systematically examined4 5 or thoroughly appreciated by most text-books on clinical diagnosis or on the examina- tion of the urine, especially in this country. That the smegma bacillus frequently occurs in the urine, especially of females, had been known for some time in the Clinic Nothnagel when, at Dr. Mannaberg’s suggestion, I undertook to determine the actual frequency and attempt the cultivation of the bacillus. Whilst my work was in progress a discussion in the Berlin Verein fur Innere Medicin ’ showed that, although maDy 1 Matterstock: Mitteilungen aus der Medicinischen Klinik der Universitat, Wurzburg, Band li., p. 367. 2 Alvarez et Tavel: Archives de Physiologic Normale et Pathologique, 1885, vol. vi., p. 303. 3 Lustgarten und Mannaberg: Vierteljahrschrift lUr Dermatologie und Syphilis, 1887, p. 905. 4 Except, perhaps, by L^snlk and Mayzel, in the practically in- accessible Gazeta Lekarska, 1891, No. 36. The abstracts give no iut'ormation. 5 Berliner Kllnlsche Wochensehrlft, 1896, p. 378.