( 910 ) 
disease, chickens fed with sterilized rice, and moreover with cultures 
of these bacteria, must much sooner be attacked by Polyneuritis 
gallinarum than the former, as these receive only such bacilli as 
accidentally pass from the air into the erops;*) whereas the latter 
swallow with the rice entire cultures of these bacteria. 
It appeared indeed that chickens, fed with sterilized rice and 
cultures of acetifying rice-bacilli bred on ferment, showed already 
on the 3'¢ dav symptoms of paralysis and cyanosis. The third 
day they are sitting in the cage with paralyzed feet and bristling 
feathers, blue combs, show soon dyspnoe and die the fifth day. A 
dreadful diarrhoea was perceptible previously and the animals are 
enormously emaciated in those five days, so that even the breast- 
muscles have disappeared. All symptoms correspond entirely to those 
which chickens, fed with rice only, do not show before 24 or 25% 
day, but here they coincide in a short space”). 
This experiment proved undubitably that the air- and rice-bacillus 
generating sour fermentation, isolated by me, can cause the symp- 
toms of Polyneuritis gallinarum when it is introduced into the in- 
testines of chickens. 
The bacteria in question, the froth of the fermentation can be 
observed post mortem everywhere in the intestinal canal, the bacteria 
themselves seem sub finem to merge into the blood, and this fact 
explains that formerly so often bacteria were isolated from the 
blood of Beri-beri patients and chickens. Perhaps then already the 
same bacillus was found, which however was always rejected as the 
morbifie agent; because it was supposed that it was to be expected that 
the morbific agent, when brought into the blood, must cause Beri- 
beri. It was not vet known that Beri-beri seems to belong to a 
peculiar group of diseases that find their origin in micro-organisms, 
and yet are no infectious-diseases in the usual sense of the word, 
and are best characterized as fermentation-diseases. In these diseases 
the morbid organism is only detrimental in the intestines and harm- 
less in the blood.*). For the present this remains a theoretically 
construed group, among which I classify Aphthae tropicae*), the 
1) Or the very bacteria of rice with EyKMAN’s method. This is of course never 
the case with man, as he never eats raw rice. Yet | once saw a fanatical vege- 
tarian do so, and I understand now why he perished from violent diarrhoea. 
2) By adding fewer bacteria to the rice the process can be rendered slower. 
3, This is the reason why pe Haan and Grisys searched in vain in the serum 
of recovered Beri-beri patients, or in the serum and hydroperieardial fluid of 
patients for “complementsbinding.” Neither did they find any in chickens, 
1) According to Dr. Maurer’s and my own investigations. 
