The period in which gonorrhea began to infect man is unknown, but the earliest records make mention of it. The disease was treated crudely until 1879, when Neisser 1 discovered the diplococcus, which he termed the gonococcus, and which has since been looked on as the etiologic factor of the disease. Six years later, in 1885, Bumm,2 a German investigator, reported that he had succeeded in securing the gonococcus through culture on peptone agar with serum as a medium.
In the work reported here, smears were tried and then the different mediums were used and finally hydrocele agar was chosen, which agar was first described by Wertheim,3 in 1899. In growing the gonococcus on this medium, the method of reduced oxygen tension, as described by Schwartz,4 in 1920, was followed.
At times it is difficult to obtain hydrocele fluid to make hydrocele agar, and often one has