Many experiments have been made with a view to establishing the identity of the organism of yaws and also of differentiating between the causative agents of yaws and syphilis. Both monkeys and the human subject have been experimentally inoculated with yaws material and have developed the disease.
In an early experiment, negroes were inoculated with the secretion from lesions of yaws. All of them developed the disease, nodules appearing, chiefly at the seat of inoculation, in from twelve to twenty days, followed by the usual eruption. Similar results were obtained with thirty-two Chinese prisoners, who were inoculated with yaws, twenty-eight becoming infected.
A naturally infected yaws patient when inoculated with syphilis, contracted that infection, thus showing that yaws does not confer immunity to syphilis. This has also been observed naturally, when yaws patients have contracted syphilis.
Experiments with monkeys have been successfully performed. The incubation period varies from sixteen to ninety-two days. Lesions appear first at the seat of inoculation, and in some monkeys the eruption is localized to this spot, though the infection is general, T. pertenue occurring in the spleen, lymphatics, etc. Monkeys inoculated with splenic blood of a yaws patient, and also sometimes with blood from the general circulation, have become infected.
Castellani and others have shown that monkeys successfully inoculated with syphilis do not become immune to yaws, and vice-versâ.
Craig and Ashburn, using the monkey Cynomolgus philippinensis, found these animals susceptible to yaws but not to syphilis.
The ulcerated lesions of frambœsia are rapidly invaded by numerous bacteria as well as by different spirochætes, of which Castellani has described three distinct species. One is identical with Spirochæta refringens, Schaudinn, the other two are thin and delicate. One, S. obtusa, has blunt ends; the other S. acuminata, has pointed ends. T. pertenue is also present.
The reasons for considering T. pertenue to be the specific cause of frambœsia are:—
(1) T. pertenue is the only organism present in non-ulcerated papules, in the spleen and in the lymphatics of yaws patients, or of monkeys artificially infected with the disease. By no method has any other organism been obtained.