i894. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 251 



of resistance of his plague bacillus are not very high, as it seems to 

 form no spores. Four days desiccation kills it, as does exposure to 

 sunlight for three or four hours in the dried condition. The tempera- 

 ture of boiling water is fatal in a few minutes, and a one per cent, 

 solution of carbolic acid kills in an hour. So that we shall know in a 

 measure how to deal with this bacillus in case it ever does break loose 

 among us. It seems, moreover, that the plague is essentially a 

 filth disease, and would stand little chance in presence of decent 

 modern sanitation. 



Small-pox. 



The recent outbreak of small-pox in London, though the prompt 

 measures taken seem to have been effectual in confining it within 

 moderate limits, may serve to remind us how difficult a thing it is to 

 fight against an enemy whose exact nature we do not know. 

 Empirically we have learned much as to the prophylaxis and treat- 

 ment of the disease, and now that experiment has demonstrated that 

 vaccinia is merely small-pox modified by transmission through the 

 •cow, we have a rational scientific basis for the practice of vaccination. 

 Yet, though small-pox is always with us, and in spite of the fact 

 that experimental inoculation of mankind with its attenuated virus is 

 rendered compulsory by law, the actual nature of the virus remains 

 still under dispute. It is rather the fashion nowadays, when no 

 bacterium can be demonstrated in a given specific disease, to invoke 

 the Protozoon. That Protozoa may cause disease we know — witness 

 malaria — but the utmost caution is required in interpreting the 

 appearances to be seen in epithelial cells stained with fancy dyes, 

 and the protozoan origin of small-pox, as of cancer, rests at present 

 on a very slender foundation. And indeed there is now some 

 ■evidence that the virus of small-pox may after all be a spore-bearing 

 bacillus which has hitherto eluded observation by its habit of turning 

 into an unstainable spore at an earlier period than that at which anyone 

 had thought of looking for it. Both Dr. Klein and subsequently 

 Dr. S. Monckton Copeman have independently discovered that such 

 a spore-bearing bacillus is to be demonstrated in the lesions of small- 

 pox and vaccinia, if search be made at a sufficiently early stage of 

 the disease, and though cultivations have uniformly failed, there 

 seems at least to be a possibility that this organism may prove to 

 be the true cause of small-pox. 



In a supplement dated 25th May last the Leeivard Islands Gazette 

 reports a paper read by Mr. C. A. Barber at the inaugural meeting 

 of the St. Kitts branch of the Leeward Islands Agricultural Society. 

 The paper deals chiefly with a disease affecting the sugar-cane, known 

 as the Rind-fungus {Tvichosphcevia Sacchari), and described as the most 



