AND CONTENTS OF THE MOUTH. 435 



as its greater abundance in the last stages of pneumonia, its 

 presence in traumatic pneumonia, and other evidences will 

 prove it to be so. But even admitting that the evolution in the 

 sense of virulence may take place in the mouth and not in the 

 respiratory organs affected (as regards virulence, which may be 

 inoculated) ; admitting that it has preceded and not followed 

 pneumonia, we cannot necessarily infer that the disease proceeded 

 from this coccus. But even the colonies of these diplococci, when 

 repeatedly transplanted in other culture media, or even the media 

 themselves, may become contaminating through inoculation, this 

 circumstance may also occur with other salivary bacteria (for 

 example, Bacillus crassus sputtgenus), and might be interesting in 

 experimental pathology ; but, botanically speaking, it does not 

 implicitly imply a separate specific entity. We repeat that we do 

 not impugn, but rather try to conciliate the results of the inocula- 

 tions with those of the morphological research. 



II. — Bacillus of Koch. Our remarks concerning this bacillus 

 are very similar, and we hope at a future time to devote a special 

 Memoir to it. The reasons which induced us to believe the 

 bacillus in rosaries to be a dissemination of the small spores of 

 Leptothrix spread over the tubercular spots, and the rod-shaped 

 bacilli as proceeding from other elements of Leptothrix^ have been 

 already given in the preceding Memoirs. Their greater dissemi- 

 nation in phthisis than under other conditions may depend upon 

 different causes, and partly, perhaps, from the following simple 

 reason : — Breathing through the nose, as we generally do, only a 

 few germs of a purely buccal origin are inhaled ; but the position 

 becomes altered when we breathe through the mouth as well, as 

 happens in phthisis, because of panting or burning heat : — 



" . . open'd wide his lips, 

 Gasping as in the hectic man for drought. 

 One towards the chin, the other upward curl'd." 



— Dante, Inferno^ xxx., Gary's Transl. 



Now, the small sporules of Leptothrix exclusively originate 

 from the patina dentaria, and without that particular form of 

 breathing (/.^., by the mouth) they cannot gather in any great 

 number into the air-passages. Many also, in sleeping, breathe 



