BY DR. OSCAR KATZ, 675 



These organisms, being besides a little lai-ger than the strep- 

 tococci in the spleen, are therefore morphologically different 

 from the latter. 



Another portion of the blood was used for cultivation purposes. 



On being transferred on an inclined surface of nutrient gelatine 



in test-tubes, it gave rise to a pure culture of micrococci similar to 



those in the blood. The cultures grew but slowly, being at the 



beginning greyish, then orange, and ultimately assuming a bright 



coral-red colour. The cultures did not liquefy the gelatine. They 



resembled to some extent, Micrococcus cinnahareus (Fliigge, Micro- 



organismeu; Leipzig, 1886, p. 174), and had, so to say, not the look 



of being infectious. Still I inoculated with such gelatine-cultures 



of the first, second, and third generations, six house-mice subcutane- 



ously, of which four died, one of them after somewhat less than 



twenty-four hours, one within 30-44 hours, the third after forty-five 



hours, and the fourth after ten days. I doubt whether the inoculated 



culture had anything to do with the death of this latter animal. 



With some heart-blood of the first-mentioned mouse, which died 



in less than twenty -four hours, another mouse was infected ; it died 



after about twenty-four hours. In this way I continued to inoculate 



from mouse to mouse in two other cases ; death each time ensued 



after about the same time (twenty-four hours). Want of mice 



caused me to interrupt those experiments. There were no 



characteristic or constant pathological changes noticeable in the 



organs of the dead animals. A microscopic examination of, and 



cultivation experiments with, blood and sap of organs yielded 



negative results. The inoculated micrococci were never found 



there ; however from the place of inoculation these micro-organisms 



were obtained. According to this result, no infection had taken 



place in the mice experimented upon, and the fatal results with 



most of them must be considered due to some toxic substance or 



substances elaborated by the multiplying organisms. Tliese, then, 



ai-e not infectious, at least not for mice ; no doubt they were 

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