1012 RECORD OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



the bodies by this matter, and not by blood or lymph taken from 

 other parts of the same subject, even when from the very edge of the 

 boil. Three separate subjects were experimented on, and from each the 

 same microscopic organism was obtained. 



By injecting the cultivated growths of the organism under the skin 

 of rabbits, &c., small and readily healed abscesses were produced in 

 which the organism was found in a state of development. Injected 

 into the jugular vein of guinea-pigs, the growths produced no result, 

 a circumstance which is important as confirming other experiments 

 which show the difficulty — due probably to its healthy activity and the 

 absorption of oxygen by the blood-corj)uscles — of propagating such 

 organisms in blood. The disease osteomyelitis is also accompanied by 

 the same growth, in the form of minute grains aggregated by twos 

 and larger numbers. 



In an ultimately fatal case of puerperal fever, the lochia were found 

 to contain the same organism. Two days later, the blood itself was 

 found to contain a growth of long chains of cells. After death, pus 

 from the peritoneum, the blood of the basilic and femoral veins, and 

 pus from the surface of the uterus and Fallopian tubes was found on 

 cultivation to contain the germs of the long chains of cells. In the 

 peritoneal matter occurred a vibrio, already described as " organism of 

 the pus." In another instance, in which the mother and child both 

 died, the boil-organism and the pus-vibrio were found in the lochia 

 and in the milk, and the inoculation of a rabbit with the matter caused 

 the development in it of large abscesses. In another case the blood 

 and the synovial membrane of the knee were ultimately affected by 

 the chain-like microphyte. In the blood of an infant which died soon 

 after birth, was found the pyogenic vibrio. The only indications of 

 disease found in the mother were a number of abscesses in the liver 

 and ulcerations on the hepatic vein. The lymphatics of the uterus 

 appear in some cases to distribute the disease-germs to the rest of the 

 body. 



Professor Lister, in his address to the Cambridge Meeting of the 

 British Medical Association,* says : " I need hardly remark on the 

 surpassing importance of researches such as these. No one can say 

 but that, if the Association should meet at Cambridge again ten years 

 hence, some one may be able to record the discovery of the appro- 

 priate vaccine for measles, scarlet fever, and other acute specific 

 diseases in the human subject. But oven should nothing more be 

 effected than what seems to be already on the point of attainment — 

 the means of securing poultry from death by fowl-cholera, and cattle 

 from the terribly destructive splenic fever, it must be admitted that 

 we have an instance of a most valuable result from the much-reviled 

 vivisection." 



Fowl-Cholera and "Sleep Disease." t — M. Talmy has been struck 

 by the resemblance of the fowl-cholera to the " sleep disease " or 

 " nelavan," which attacks the natives of the west coast of Africa. 

 In this disease, whose symptoms may be compared with those given 



* Loc. cit. t 'Comptes Rendus,' xc. (1880) pp. 1014-17. 



