In 1902, Preisz at Budapest isolated the same bacillus from two cases of
contagious abortion in cows. He confirmed the findings of Bang in
respect to the oxygen requirements of the organism, and was able to
obtain cultures by a variety of methods on ordinary media. Apparently
his cultures were less vigorous than those of Bang, for they soon died
out, their resistance to germicides was slight, and all his
inoculations into animals, including two pregnant cows, two pregnant
guinea pigs, and one pregnant rabbit, as well as a number of other small
animals, were without positive result. Preisz named the organism
"_Corynebacterium abortus endemici (s. infectiosi)_."
In 1908, Nowak at the University of Krakau in Austria made a very
important contribution to the study of this disease. He found the
culture method of Bang and Stribolt very useful for the identification
of the organism when obtainable in pure culture, and when the
contaminating bacteria were few in number. When other bacteria were
numerous, as is frequently the case in material obtained for
examination, he found this method difficult. The pyrogallol method of
Preisz also proved to be unreliable in his hands. Eventually he devised
a method of plate culture which proved to be very useful. Ordinary agar
was melted and cooled to 50° C. then mixed with about one fourth its
volume of naturally sterile blood serum, and poured into sterile Petri
dishes where it was allowed to solidify. The piece of placenta or other
material to be examined was then streaked over several of these plates
in succession, and the plates were incubated for 24 hours at 37° C., to
allow contaminating bacteria to develop. The plates were next placed in
a glass jar together with a culture of _Bacillus subtilis_, one square
centimeter of culture surface of the latter organism being provided for
each 15 cc. capacity of the jar. The jar was sealed and placed at 37° C.
for three days, at the end of which time excellent surface colonies of
Bang's bacillus were obtained. By the application of this method Nowak
has succeeded in isolating the bacillus from the blood and intestinal
contents of a number of fetuses, and from uterine discharge, when other
methods failed. He has also observed that one could gradually decrease
the amount of culture surface of _B. subtilis_ employed in succeeding
cultures and eventually get the bacillus of Bang to grow in the presence
of atmospheric air, altho the cultures were relatively poor ones. Nowak
also confirmed Bang by obtaining cultures in an atmosphere of nearly
pure oxygen, as well as in ordinary air under a pressure of three
atmospheres. His cultures were evidently vigorous for some of them were
successfully transplanted after two years. Nowak used ordinary agar as a
medium with considerable success, and found glucose agar to be almost as
favorable to the growth of the bacillus. For the detection of the germ
in pathological material, however, these media proved to be inferior to
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