234 PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



graph of Professor Gruber, of Vienna, on the tympanic membrane and 

 auditory ossicles (Anatomisch-physiologische Studien iiber das Trommel- 

 fell und die GehbrTcnochelchen, Wien, 1867), may be commended to all 

 who are studying the histology of the organ of hearing. The figures, 

 though somewhat coarsely executed, are, nevertheless, rendered effec- 

 tive by the employment of brown and grey colours. 



Vulpian on the Septic Virus. — Dr. J. B. Sanderson, F.E.S., states 

 in a recent number of the 'Medical Record' that M. Vulpian has 

 communicated to the Society of Biology an account of six experiments 

 on rabbits on the production of septicaemia (Contribution a V Etude 

 de la Septicemie) by the development of bacteria in the blood. He 

 regards the results as confirmatory of those of M. Davaine. In the 

 first experiment, two drops of blood taken after death from a patient 

 affected with gangrene of the lung, produced death in twenty hours. 

 The blood of this animal, taken during life, contained innumerable 

 "granulations" and "rods." In the second experiment, exudation 

 liquid, from the pleura of a guinea-pig infected by inoculation with 

 the blood of the same patient, was used ; death occurred in twenty 

 hours. In the third experiment, a couple of drops of a mixture of 

 blood (of the subject of the second experiment) with fifty times its 

 volume of water, were inserted ; death followed in twenty-four hours. 

 In the fourth experiment a similar quantity of water containing T qVo 

 of the same blood was used. Death occurred in twenty-three hours. 

 In the fifth experiment, water containing T ,o-o^,o~o o" °f the same blood 

 was used. The symptoms were much less marked; death occurred 

 after fifty hours. In the sixth experiment the dilution was increased 

 *° t,'o~oo\7to~o.oto"* Tk e animal was affected with leucocytes, but 

 recovered. It is well worthy of record that, even in liquids diluted a 

 million times, granulations and bacteria could be found by the micro- 

 scope. They could even be detected in the liquid used in the sixth 

 experiment. All the infected animals displayed what M. Vulpian 

 calls " bacteripemia." In using the term, he means to imply that the 

 bacteria are the efficient cause of the infection. In most of them 

 there was j)eritonitis, the exudation liquid containing innumerable 

 bacteria. All the experiments were made on rabbits. Guinea-pigs 

 were tried, but abandoned, because the results were less marked. 



Canella alba and Pomegranate Barks. — These are minutely de- 

 scribed as to their microscopic anatomy in a paper in the ' Pharma- 

 ceutical Journal ' (March 8), by Mr. H. Pocklington. Of Canella he 

 says that beginning with the outside of the bark we have first 

 "stellate" cells, analogous to those found in cassia and cinnamon, 

 but somewhat different in size and shape, and are wholly situate on 

 the outer surface of the bark, where they form a tolerably continuous 

 layer of varying thickness, ranging from two to six or eight cells 

 thick. They are porous, the pores being few and large. The 

 successive deposits of thickening matter are not very evident without 

 the use of powerful reagents, and they stain intensely with magenta, 

 prolonged boiling in alcohol not removing the colour entirely. 

 Indigo and logwood solutions do not permanently stain them, but 



