THE RELATIONS OF MICRO-ORGANISMS TO DISEASE, 339 
pathologist did little more than grope in the dark, was con- 
verted by Koch into a pure cultivating apparatus, in which 
the growth and effects of the micro-organisms of various 
infective diseases could be studied with the utmost sim- 
plicity and precision. 
One more example I must take from Koch’s work. On 
one occasion, as the result of inoculating putrid liquid into 
a rabbit, he observed a spreading inflammation having all 
the clinical characters of erysipelas; and, on examining 
stained sections of the part, he discovered another exqui- 
sitely delicate bacillus resembling the micrococcus of the 
gangrene in being local in its development, while its exact 
correspondence in extent with that of the disease led fairly 
to the conclusion that it constituted the materies morbi.) 
I will next refer to a disease occasioned by a micro- 
organism discovered by the eminent pathologist, Professor 
Toussaint, of Toulouse, whom I am proud to see present in 
this Section to-day. This disease has been somewhat in- 
appropriately termed Cholera des poules, or fow) cholera, 
for it is not attended with diarrhoea or any other of the 
symptoms of cholera; but, as it happened to be extremely 
destructive among the poultry-yards of Paris at the same 
time that an epidemic of cholera was raging in the city, the 
disorder that prevailed among the fowls was also given the 
name of cholera. The lesions by which it is chiefly cha- 
racterised are great swelling of the chains of lymphatic 
glands in the vicinity of the trachea, pericarditis accom- 
panied with great effusion, and congestion, and it may be 
ulceration, of the mucous membrane of the duodenum. It 
is a blood disease, and highly infectious. If some of the 
blood of a chicken that has died of it be mixed with the oats 
with which healthy chickens are fed, a considerable propor- 
tion, perhaps four out of six, are affected and die; and 
similar results are produced by mixing the intestinal ex- 
creta of diseased fowls with the food. It is an interesting 
question how the virus thus administered enters the circu- 
lation. The invariable affection of the lymphatic glands of 
the throat suggests to M. Toussaint the idea that some 
accidental abrasion of the epithelium in the mouth or 
pharynx is probably the channel; and this view is con- 
firmed by the fact that a similar affection of the lymphatic 
glands, together with other symptoms of the disease, is pro- 
duced by inoculating the chicken in the mouth; and fur- 
‘See ‘Untersuchungen iiber die Atiologie der Wundinfectionskrank- 
heiten, von Robert Dr. Koch, Leipzig, 1878. . A translation has just been 
issued by the Sydenham Society. 
