1236 ""summary of curkent researches relating to 



lilack ; others being of a cinnamon brown colour, and some of a pale 

 bisduit tint. All were sprinkled with white cyrstalline particles. The 

 sporangium walls, usually very thin and fragile, were hard, thick, and 

 chippy. There was no distinguishable capillitium. Stranger still, the 

 sporangia were only about half the ordinary diameter ; in other words, 

 about one-eighth of the usual size. The spores, generally bright brown 

 and spinulose, were smooth and almost colourless : but were of the 

 usual dimensions, if not, on the average, slightly larger ; and in all 

 other respects appeared to be perfectly normal. The characters on 

 w^hich the classification is based were thus altered in nearly every 

 particular, the only permanent feature being apparently the specific 

 spore-plasm. It was subsequently found that the spores germinated 

 freely in the usual way ; but the formation of plasmodia from the 

 resulting swarmpores was not observed, further developments being 

 prevented from an undue growth of fungus and large numbers of 

 infusoria. In cultivating plasmodia on bread when the natural food, 

 Stereum hirsutum or Polyporus versicolor, is not readily obtainable, the 

 following mixture has proved very satisfactory : Cane sugar, J oz. ; 

 ammonium phosphate, GO grm. : calcium phosphate, 60 grm. ; white 

 starch, 3u grm. ; dilute sulphuric acid, 10 drops ; water, 1 pint. 



Artificial Cultivation of Hansen's Bacillus.* — H. Bayon, in 

 answer to criticisms by Fraser and Fletcher with regard to the 

 cultivation of B. hjjrse, states in reference to transmissions to animals 

 that " whether one injects ground-up nodules or Kedrowsky's culture, 

 in the great majority of cases the bacteria get simply eliminated 

 without leaving any visible trace. In single rare instances they 

 produce bacillary deposits similar to those found in the inner organs of 

 lepers." " We cannot expect skin lesions in animals inoculated with 

 leprosy ; all we can hope for are discrete deposits in the inner organs. 

 If they can be transmitted through some generations and persist for a 

 considerable time, and the bacillary deposit is superior to the quantity 

 injected, then it seems to me that by all the laws of experimental 

 medicine the inoculation has succeeded. This is the case with one 

 experiment fully described in my paper." 



He further maintains that " it cannot be too often repeated that the 

 scanty positive results obtained in the experimental study of leprosy are 

 absolutely in keeping with what we know of the clinical features of the 

 disease, its low and eminently capricious infectivity ; but that here 

 more than when dealing with any other disease, the partial and 

 incomplete interpretation of hundreds of negative observations cannot 

 invalidate the proof positive of a single successful inoculation." 



(5) Mounting-, including- Slides. Preservative Fluids, etc. 



Venetian Turpentine Method : a Substitute for the Glycerin and 

 Glycerin-jelly Methods.f — C. J. Chamberlain remarks that the great 

 practical advantages of the method are that preparations are as hard and 



* Ann. Trop. Med. and Parasit., ix. (1915) pp. 535-S. 

 t Journ. Micrology, 1916, pp. 8-12. 



