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degree of acidity much better than all other microbes occurring in 
the soil, so that the same might be expected with regard to the 
stomach sarecina if this were indeed identical with it. The further 
course of the experiment confirmed the correctness of this expecta- 
tion too. 
The bottles destined for the experiment were cooled after closing 
to about 40°C. and only opened at the moment the infection material 
was at hand, which consisted in the contents of the stomach of a 
person suffering of stenosis oesophagi. About 5 em? of it was intro- 
duced into each bottle and that so quickly after the pumping out of 
the stomach, that the material had no time, neither to be saturated 
with air nor to be cooled considerably below the temperature of the 
body. Microscopically a great many sarcines were to be recognised, 
other microbes. being hardly to be found. It is true that many yeast- 
cells occurred, but they proved dead and originated evidently from the 
yeast used for the preparation of the bread-porridge which the patient 
had eaten. Rests of potatoes and rice were also recognised in the 
contents. 
Before proceeding the following observation may be mentioned here. 
Directly after the pumping out of the stomach a little bottle was 
also quite filled with the thus obtained contents only, closed with 
a cork and placed in a thermostat at 87°C. The result was that in 
this bottle, already after a few minutes, so vigorous a fermentation 
set in that the cork was thrown off. As microscopic examination 
proved that in this way a very pure Sarcina fermentation was 
obtained, this simple experiment had for the first time demonstrated 
that the stomach Sarcina can be nothing else but an anaérobic fer- 
mentation sarcina. 
The acid titer of the clear filtrate of the contents was, according 
to Professor vAN LerERSUM, 3.8 cm? N per 100 em’, with phenol- 
phtalein as indicator, whilst free hydrochloric acid seemed quite 
absent, so that the acid must chiefly have been the lactic acid 
secreted by the sarcina itself, which is in fact very well possible, 
as at laboratory experiments the sarcina of the soil grows readily 
in somewhat saccharified meal-mashes and can form therein about 
4 em? N latie acid per 100 cm’. The striking purity of the sarcina 
fermentation in so heterogeneous a mass as the stomach contents, 
in which neither lactic acid ferments nor alcohol yeasts were to be 
found, might have been explained by the presence of free hydro- 
chlorie acid, this acid being much better tolerated by the sarcina 
than by the other microbes. But as this acid seemed to be quite 
absent, the said pure development of the sarcina in the stomach, 
