Refractory Subcutaneous Abscesses Caused by Sporothrix Schenckii. a New Pathogenic Fungus

In the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital for December, 1898, there appeared an article by B. R. Schenck " On Refractory Subcutaneous Abscesses caused by a Fungns possibly related to the Sporotrieha." "The primary point of infection was on the index finger, whence it extended up the radial side of the arm, following the lymph channels, and giving rise to several circumscribed indurations, which were in part broken down and ulcerated." This infection proved re1 T refractory to treatment. The organism supposed to cause the lesions in this case was obtained in three cultures from two different loci of the disease, twice in pure culture. Schenck carefully describes the cultural characteristics, the morphology and development and the results of the inoculations of this organism which Dr. Erwin F. Smith, of the United States Department of Agriculture at Washington, tentatively assigns to the genus Sporotr ichum. During the last few months we have had occasion to study a case presenting similar refractory subcutaneous abscesses from which an organism has been isolated which is identical in the essential details with the one described by Schenck.