Valuable but Neglected Technique for the Culture of Aerobic Organisms from Cerebrospinal Fluid.

Passot (1913) suggested that there was a greater chance of growing an organism from the cerebrospinal fluid if a technique were employed similar to that used in blood culture and a large volume of cerebrospinal fluid added to fluid media rather than a single loop of deposit. Most hospitals and textbooks, however, seem to favour culture of the deposit only. In this laboratory the results obtained by culturing the deposit of a specimen of cerebrospinal fluid and the whole of the supematant fluid after centrifuging for five minutes at 3,000 r.p.m. in an M.S.E. centrifuge have been compared.