Perithecium like organs were found in the crust of the patient with sporotrichosis.
The patient was female, 68 years old. About 16 months ago, a papule had appeared on the dorsal surface of her right hand joint area. It had been slowly spreading in spite of the medical treatment. When she visited on our hospital, an ulceration, ca. 5 × 2 cm in area, was formed on the extensor site of her right forearm. It was flat, elevated slightly from the skin surface without pain. Around the ulceration scales and crusts, dyed redness with mercurochrome, were attached. There was no significant lymphadenopathy on the regional area.
Family history and laboratory findings were not particular.
For the histopathological examination, crusts on the edge of the lesion were picked up carefully and fixed with 10% formalin solution, then, stained with PAS stain.
Perithecium like organs were found in the crust specimens. This organ was jar-shape, with ostiole (ca. 50 μ in diameter) and it's cavity (ca. 60 × 70 μ) was jammed with ellipsoid or cylindrical spores. The wall was 15-25 μ in width and the cells which composed of it were various in size and in shape. The wall was composed of two layers by the extent of staining. Inner layer was strongly stained with PAS stain but outer one less strongly.
The biopsy specimens showed a typical histopathological pattern in sporotrichosis, showing a combination of a pyogenic and granulomatous reaction with Langhans' giant cells and asteroid bodies.
In order to culture the scales and crusts and the biopsy specimens, Sabouraud's glucose agar slants and plates were employed. After 7 days incubation at the room temperature, numerous colonies of Sporothrix schenckii were observed on the media and other two fungi also grew as contaminants although their numbers were a few. One of them was Penicillium decumbens and the other Papularia sphaerosperma.

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Suitable conditions for hydrolysis were studied for maximal yield of free glucosamine from cell walls of Trichophyton mentagrophytes; hydrolysis with 6N HCl at 100°C for 4 h seemed best. Since as known, significant loss of hexosamines occurs during hydrolysis by a hot mineral acid, the rate of decomposition was examined under various conditions of acid concentration and time of incubation using glucosamine, galactosamine, and mannosamine as standards ; a correction factor was thereby applied to the hexosamine determination. From these results, it was inferred that the glucosamine content in the cell walls of T. mentagrophytes was 30.4%.

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An experiment was carried out to clarify a relationship between pathogenicity for mice and proteolytic activity of Aspergillus fumigatus.
Twenty-five strains of the fungus, isolated from man, air and soil, were used in it. Male mice of the dd strain weighing 22 ± 1 g were used for inoculation. They were divided into twenty-five groups of five mice each, one group being allotted to one strain.
Spore suspensions were prepared in 1/15 M phosphate buffer (pH 7.4; supplemented with 0.01% Tween 80) from fourteen-day cultures on potato-dextrose agar slant at room temperature. Each mouse was inoculated intravenously into the coccygeal vein 5 × 10⁶ spores of the strain suspended in 0.2 ml of phosphate buffer solution and held under observation for thirty days. Mice surviving over thirty days were sacrificed. All the experimental mice were examined macroscopically and microscopically. Three of the strains were found to have affected the brain severely. The affected brain was swollen, with the cortex and gyri flattened and the fissures narrowed. Histologically, its tissues were conspicuously damaged, containing abundant hyphae.
In order to investigate the fungus for production of protease, two media, brain heart infusion agar and heart infusion agar, were employed. Eighteen ml of each medium was poured into petri dish (ca. 9 cm in diameter) containing 2 ml of 20% skim milk solution and mixed throughly. Then each strain was inoculated into the medium at the center of the dish and incubated at 37°C for eight days. Proteolytic activity was determined by the sign of casein digestion. Five of the twenty-five strains showed this sign. Especially, three of them showed high proteolytic activity and were the same strains as affected the brain severely.
These results seemed to suggest that there might be a definite relationship between the ability of the fungus to affect the brain of the mouse severely and the proteolytic activity of the same fungus.

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In the period from April 1965, when we had first case, to June 1973 (8 years), we had 28 cases (20 females and 8 males) of sporotrichosis in Kagoshima Prefecture. Fourteen cases showed the cutaneous lymphatic type and other 14 cases the fixed type.
We found many fungal elements in the tissue in serial sections stained with PAS. The fungal elements were composed of free spores (in 20 cases), budding spores (in 4 cases), spores in giant cells (in 5 cases), asteroid bodies in the tissue (in 4 cases) and an asteroid body in a giant cell (in one case). Sporotrichum Schenkii were cultured from lesions of 25 cases.

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