Abstract
Davis and Rosenow 1 described the streptococcus which caused the Chicago epidemic of septic sore throat of 1911-12. They considered the disease to be a definite clinical entity like the Boston epidemic of 1911. The latter epidemic was described by Winslow, 2 who regarded it as the first of its kind to be described in this country. It was distinguishable from the throat disease which resembles atypical scarlet fever and which may be associated with definite scarlet fever cases.
Davis 3 gave the streptococcus of the Chicago epidemic the specific name epidemicus. Only 2 characters have been mentioned by investigators of this organism by which it may be differentiated from other hemolytic streptococci of human origin—the appearance of a capsule in young, moist cultures and the marked moisture and rapid drying of the colonies. Rosenow and others who studied Streptococcus epidemicus soon recognized the indefiniteness of capsule formation and moistness of colonies as specific characters. Rosenow reported that on artificial cultivation the epidemic sore throat strains assumed the characters of S. pyogenes; and that when cultivated in unheated milk S. pyogenes became modified so as to correspond with the streptococcus of epidemic sore throat. Ward and Lyons 4 and other investigators cited by them have recently shown that capsule formation and mucoid growth are characters of one of the variants of the hemolytic streptococcus of which another variant may occur with these characters lacking.
In studying a large collection of strains of hemolytic streptococci from a great variety of human and animal disease sources, the writer found that phagologically there is a distinction between a small group which is made up largely of septic sore throat strains and the large group which contains the majority of the scarlet fever strains of the collection.
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