The most common organism recovered in blood cultures from patients with rheumatic fever or some types of arthritis has been some form of streptococcus (Poynton and Paine,1 Loeb,2 Richards,8 Suranyi and Forro,4 Rosenow,5 Moon and Edwards,6 Small,7 Clawson,8 Cecil, Nicholls, and Stainsby9) No agreement, however, has been reached concerning the characteristics of the streptococci obtained in either rheumatic fever or arthritis (Jordan10), and a number of observers have failed to obtain streptococci from the blood stream in any high percentage of cases (Cole,11 Swift and Kinsella,12 Nye and Seegal13). It is not our intention to dispute the prevailing conception of the streptococcal etiology in rheumatic fever or arthritis, but simply to call attention to certain other organisms which also have been found associated with these diseases, but of late have been generally disregarded. Schuller14 described short gram-negative bacilli with bipolar bodies associated with single round cocci which he obtained from the periarticular structures of patients with arthritis; when injected into the joints of rabbits they never produced pus but did produce joint changes and could be isolated from these joints. Blaxall13 found minute gramnegative bacilli exhibiting marked polar staining in the synovial fluid of 18 cases of rheumatoid arthritis; they were present in the blood of severe cases, but were not found in distended joints due to other conditions. Fayerweather18 obtained a short bacillus from joint cultures of four patients with arthritis; all forms of the bacillus were somewhat, but not entirely, alike and he was unable to identify them with any organism previously described; arthritis in rabbits could be produced only by intra-articular inoculation, intravenous inoculation being harmless. Goadby17 found organisms from the gums and other tissues of patients with rheumatoid arthritis which he believed were streptobacilli with bipolar staining though very difficult to tell from streptococci. Nye and Seegal13 failed to isolate streptococci in blood cultures from 25 rheumatic fever patients; small gram-positive bacilli were recovered, however, from two patients; in one instance from only one culture and in the other from two cultures from the same patient; these organisms were not deemed of great significance. Cecil, Nicholls, and Stainsby,9 although isolating most frequently type specific streptococci from the blood of patients with chronic infectious arthritis/' in several instances obtained