116 The Philippine Journal of Science 1920 
Manila Bay was invaded by swarms of a flagellated protozoon 
of the family Peridinide and that, as a result, large numbers 
of fish and crustacea were killed. These were gathered up by 
local fishermen, their capture being easy, and sold to the poorer 
people. Much of this food was already decomposing and as a 
result there was soon a rather extensive outbreak of intestinal 
disorder. 
It was not definitely determined at this time whether the 
illness was of the nature of food poisoning or whether a pro- 
portion of the cases represented true cholera. Undoubtedly, 
many of these cases were cholera, and it might be assumed that | 
these represented carriers in which the infective germs had 
been called into activity as a result of the gastrointestinal irri- 
tation produced by the ingestion of the partially decomposed 
sea food. In passing, it must be remarked, however, that the 
cholera epidemic was on the decline when this happened; 
secondly, a very small proportion of the cases were bacterio- 
logically positive for the vibrio and, lastly, the mortality was 
far below that of the minimum mortality in cholera. 
Johnston, from September, 1914, to December,’ 1917, noticed 
the occurrence of intermittent carriers as well as of nonag- 
glutinable vibrios. These findings made it the more difficult to 
determine the duration of the carrier state. 
Schébl, in 1916, demonstrated that administration of bile to 
experimental cholera carriers prolonged the carrier state and 
caused a more frequent excretion of vibrios than in normal 
carriers. This evidently is a great help in the detection of 
normal carriers. He also found specific immune bodies in the 
blood serum of experimental carriers. 
The same author, in 1917, found some chemicals which pro- 
duced slight curative effects upon experimental vibrio carriers, 
among them being guaiacol, pyrogallol, atoxyl, sodium cacodylate, 
arsenic trioxide, and Ehrlich-Hata 606. These experiments are 
by no means final; still they yield some hope for the treatment 
of carriers. The phenol group and some of the arsenic com- 
pounds are of some promise. Combination treatment by several 
drugs also suggests itself, 
In 1917 the Health Service paid more attention to the occur- 
rence of nonagglutinable vibrios and after a study of the ques- 
tion came to these provisional conclusions: 
i That atypical cases with marked symptoms may coincide 
with the presence of nonagglutinable vibrios and the absence 
of the classic agglutinable ones. 
