Johns Hopkins Medical School


With these organisms, experimental transfer of the disease was success-
ful in several species of animals. The disease is frequently called North
American blastomycosis or Gilchrist's disease.15
  In 1893 Emmet Rixford of San Francisco sent material from two
cases of protozoan (coccidioidal) infection of the skin and other organs
to Welch for investigation. This was studied simultaneously by Gil-
christ in the pathological laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and
by Rixford in San Francisco resulting in an extensive publication in
1896. Clinical histories, post-mortem findings, clear descriptions, ex-
quisite plates with photomicrographs and drawings were presented,
including also several moderately successful inoculations of the tissue
into rabbits, but there was no success with cultures. Consultation with
C. W. Stiles of the Bureau of Animal Industry in Washington led the
authors to suggest that they were dealing with a protozoan parasite.
(See Ophiils, Chapter XVI.)16
  Another excellent early paper (1898) by B. R. Schenck of the pathol-
ogy department reports a case of refractory subcutaneous abscesses
caused by a fungus possibly related to the Sporotricha. Pure cultures
were readily grown from the abscesses on all ordinary media, and with
them local lesions were produced in dogs and a pyemia in mice. Photo-
graphs and drawings of the organisms and the lesions completes the
report.
  A few years later (1903) two French observers, de Beurmann and
Ramond, described a similar organism from abscesses in a similar single
case (no photographs or drawings were published), but they were
unable to reproduce the condition in experimental animals. Since then,
such cases have been described and reproduced experimentally in many
parts of the world and gradually the disease, though rare, has been
recognized as one to be differentiated from syphilis, tuberculosis, and
coccal infections. The organism has been found growing on vegetable
tissues, and most human cases are wound infections; it is best diagnosed
by culture methods. Now it is commonly acknowledged that the slight
differences in the organisms from different parts of the world are within
the limits of species variation, and Sporotrichum schenckii is the pre-
ferred scientific name.


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