THE PATHOGENICITY OF THE FUSIFORM BACILLUS AND SPIRILLUM OF PLAUT-VINCENT: A CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

It has been quite generally accepted that the Plaut-Vincent organisms have a pathogenic relationship to a variety of clinical entities. Unexceptionable proof of such relationship is wanting. The purpose of this report is to record clinical and experimental observations bearing on this subject. This study was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr. Joseph Brennemann. In the course of a study of a large series of diphtheria patients Plaut, 1 in 1894, came on five cases of non-diphtheritic membranous angina, at first taken for diphtheria, in which fusiform bacilli and spirochetes were found. Plaut called these "Miller's organisms," since these had been described in 1883 by an American dentist, Willoughby D. Miller, who stated that pathogenic properties had already been ascribed to these organisms by Verneuil and Clado, who had found them in abscesses of the sublingual salivary gland, in submaxillary adenitis and in an abscess of a finger due to