BY R. GREIG SMITH. 151 



may pass to the kidney, and thence get to the bladder. 

 Klimenko,"^ after reviewing his own work and that of others, 

 concluded that micro-organisms could not pass through the unhurt 

 intestinal wall of thoroughly healthy animals, but that the latter 

 w^ere very seldom to be met. The smallest pathological injury 

 of the whole animal organism, or an insignificant mechanical 

 injury of the intestinal mucosa, is enough to render possil)le the 

 passage of bacteria from the intestine. On this account the 

 transmigration of micro-organisms is relatively frequent. From 

 the frequency with which bacteria were met with in the mesenteric 

 lymph glands, and not in the other internal organs, he considered 

 that it is probable that the animal possesses in these a protective 

 apparatus against bacterial invasion. 



Nikolskyt mixed anthrax spores with the food of various 

 animals and found that they germinated in the contents of the 

 intestine in spite of the antagonism of the intestinal bacteria 

 and, as a rule, penetrated the mucous membrane, and so obtained 

 access to the lymph vessels and thence to the blood. Metchnikoff 

 mentions some unpublished work of Mitchel, who mixed anthrax 

 spores with the food of one set of guinea-pigs, and anthrax spores 

 and glass with the food of another. He always obtained fatal 

 results in the latter set of animals, wdiile in the former the results 

 were not alwa3''s so pronounced. He also quotes the experiments 

 of Porcher and Desoubry, who showed that the chyle of the 

 dog contained bacteria capable of growing in ordinary media that 

 could pass into the general circulation and be recovered therefrom. 

 These disappear soon after feeding, and in the practice of obtain- 

 ing curative sera it is customary to bleed the horses or other 

 animals fasting in order to obtain a serum free from microbes. 



It is apparent from these abstracts that there is a considerable 

 divergence of opinion among investigators as to whether or not 

 bacteria traverse the uninjured intestinal wall, and perhaps there 

 always will be, for reasons which I shall subsequently give. 



* Zeit. f. Hyg. xlviii. 67. 

 t Ami. Inst. Past. xiv. 794. 



JUJ L ! s? R A F- 



