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DEFINITION.—Relapsing fever is an epidemic contagious disease, the specific cause of which is not certainly known, although a peculiar spirillum appears to be constantly present in the blood.

For some years it was called the “comma bacillus,” from its supposed resemblance in shape to a comma, but it was subsequently found Causation. to be a vibrio or spirillum, not a bacillus.

The same is true of Schizomycetes, to which all the bacteria, bacillus, spirillum, and vibrio, and a number of other groups belong.

The spirillum, volutans is often found in drinking water, and in common with some other specimens of this class is provided with flagellæ, sometimes at both extremities, which furnish the means of rapid locomotion.

On account of this developmental change, he doubted if the cholera organism should be ranked with bacilli; it is rather a transitional form between the bacillus and the spirillum.