Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2009
(1) In the discharge from a case of acute urethritis spirochaetes were found which it is believed were the causal agent of the disease.
(2) The spirochaetes were most commonly 8μ to 12μ in length, and showed four or five spirals; but the range in the three hundred parasites measured was from 5μ, to 20μ. They appeared to multiply both by longitudinal and transverse division and by the formation of coocoid bodies. The parasites passed through an intracellular phase which seemed to be as follows: some of the spirochaetes enter the epithelial scales lining the urethra, become quiescent, and break up into coccoid bodies. These bodies multiply so as to form masses of granules from which young spirochaetes develop, grow to about the normal size, and eventually escape.
(3) The name Spirochaeta urethraeis proposed for the parasite.