Author: Glossary

Apparatus for the production of anaerobic condition’s in a container holding up to 10 petri dishes of 9cm diameter or an assortment of plugged test tubes. Originally of glass, the upright cylindrical vessel now used is of strong bronze or aluminium, flanged at the top to receive a clamped airtight lid provided with inlet and…

Indicators of the maintenance of anaerobic conditions in an anaerobic (McIntosh and Fildes’) jar may be external or internal: both are advisable.  

Greenish tinting of blood agar, with partial haemolysis of the red cells, around colonies of Streptococcus viridans.  

Swabs of calcium alginate, a synthetic wool having the property of dissolving easily in many alkaline solutions with total release of viable organisms. The material has uses in food hygiene bacteriology and as laryngeal swabs for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis.  

Urease-negative saprophytic species which occasionally is a urinary pathogen. A species normally found in the human intestine. It has been associated with hospital-acquired septicemia and urinary tract infections.  

Formerly known as Bordetella bronchiseptica, this is a urease-positive species, possibly haemolytic, associated with pneumonic conditions in canines, rodents and other small animals.  

Genus within the Achromobacteriaceae family, consisting of motile Gram-negative rods—oxidase and catalase positive—which fail to ferment carbohydrate. A genus of gram-negative, aerobic bacilli normally found in the human intestinal tract, in dairy products, and in soil.  

Staining method whereby the volutin (metachromatic) granules of corynebacteria are coloured by a mixture of toluidine blue and malachite green, which after further treatment with iodine solution leaves the granules blue-black and the body of the organisms (and other bacteria) light green.  

Diffusible, non-toxic substances liberated by bacterial pathogens, which add to the invasive power of the organism—possibly by interference with a defence mechanism such as phagocytosis or bacteriolysis.  

Proof of the identity of a given organism by the ability of a heavy culture completely to absorb the homologous specific agglutinin from type antiserum, which thereafter will fail to agglutinate organisms of the strain from which it was originally prepared. The test is used particularly in the genera Salmonella and Brucella, in which complex…