As mentioned in the first report, during attempts to inoculate M leprae in mice, the acid fast bacillus have been isolated, and have named "Bacillus No 4 ", which might be the contaminated mycobacteria.
At this time, we have observed the in vivo examination of this "Bacillus No 4" after inoculating into mice subcutaneously and intravenously.
The results obtained by means of their gross lesions of organs, the numbers of bacilli in organs, and the recovery culture indicated that this organism have a characteristic feature of Mycobacterium lepraemurium.
However, in recovery culture of "Bacillus No 4", the gross appearance was different from that of the primary isolate of M. lepraemurium. In latter case, colonies were mostly formed by the membraneous growth. In case of "Bacillus No 4" greater part of primary isolates appeared the discrete colonial growth.
As reported first about in vitro examination, we had almost same results just as when M. lepraemurium was used. But, there were few exceptions.
Also, the indirect fluorescent antibody methods by Dr. Abe showed the unsatisfactory result for identifying as M. leprae or as M. lepraemurium.
The character of "Bacillus No 4" is now still under examination, so no final conclusion can be made yet on its taxonomic position. (This work was supported by the grant from the Leprosy Panel of the U. S.-Japan Medical Cooperative Program)

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Cerebrovascular diseases, especially cerebral hemorrhage, have been thought the most frequent cause of death in Japan. The Ministry of Health and Welfare has reported that cerebrovascular diseases have been the top of the cause of death in Japan since 1951. Pathologists, however, do not have experienced so many autopsy cases who died of cerebrovascular diseases. Then, we investigated the cause of death in two leprosaria and compared it with informations from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
One hundred and twenty seven patients died in Komyo-en Leprosarium between 1962, January, and 1971, June. Autopsy was done on 110 cases. The average age was 62.5 years old. Malignant neoplasms (33 cases) were more frequent than cerebrovascular diseases (hemorrhage: 9 cases, softening: 3, microscopic hemorrhage: 11). The major direct cause of death was bronchopneumonia. Investigation of the death certificates in Seisho-en Leprosarium for the years 1967-1976 also revealed that cerebrovascular diseases were not the major cause of death. These results are different from informations of the cause of death in Japan published by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. This discrepancy probably comes from inaccurate description of the death certificates and low autopsy rate in this country.

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