publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ... subcutaneous tissues. The organisms known as the diplococcus intracenularis meningitis is accepted by the majority of those who have studied the disease to be the cause of the infection. Many germs of an entirely different species are capable of causing the disease. It is said, upon reliable authority, that any germ which may cause inflammation in any part of the body is capable of producing the disease if it gains an entrance into the meninges of the brain and cord by means of the circulation, or by and through the lymphatic system. Experiments made with the bacillus of tuberculosis, the bacillus typhosus, the bacillus influenzae and the diplococcus of pneumonia, prove that the disease can be caused by any one of those germs gaining an entrance into the cerebro-spinal cavity. The disease is evidently not directly contagious from the sick to the well, nor is the infection transmitted upon the Mode of Infection Unknown. Thorough Disinfection Necessary. clothing. As the diplococcus causing the disease is only found associated with the inflammation locked up in the cranial cavity and the spinal canal, it is difficult to understand how the infection leaves the body of the sick and enters the system of the sound. The infection is not found in the excretions from the body so long as the membranes of the brain and spinal cord remain intact. It has been suggested that the micro-organism gains entrance into the body through the mucous membrane of the nose. Flexner and Barker suggest that the infection may gain entrance into the system through the intestines, but these views do not seem compatible with the rapid extension of some epidemics of the disease. So far as we know, the diplococcus of cerebro-spinal meningitis is a very frail organism outside.of the human bo...

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