188 



are formed which may be injurious, this being true for both wild and cultivated 

 yeasts, but that the normal products of fermentation or the multiplication of the 

 yeast cells are not injurious. 



Busse* has found a yeast which causes a chronic pyaemia. From its resem- 

 blance to Actinomycosis he gave the disease the name Saccharomycosis hominis. 

 The course of the disease, as outlined, is that the yeast falling upon the body in- 

 creases and causes a local change, this eventually leading to formation of pus and 

 general inflammation. The yeast causes the death of white mice, the blood of 

 which is found to contain numerous yeast cells. 



Kabinowitsch,t out of fifty different varieties of yeasts, obtained seven patho- 

 genic ones, which, when injected subcutaneously into mice, rabbits and guinea- 

 pigs, caused their death. It is claimed in this case that the fatalities were due to 

 the rapid multiplication of the yeast cells in the body, and not to any products of 

 fermentation. The yeasts seem to be different from the pathogenic ones of other 

 observers. 



The only reasonable conclusion which can be drawn in regard to these vary- 

 ing results is that different species or varieties of yeast were used, these different 

 yeasts having very different products. The writer used only common yeasts, such 

 as are being taken into the system through various sources, from time to time. 

 Though the pressed yeasts, when used in bread, are killed, the products are taken 

 into the system, and all the others used would be taken into the system alive, as 

 they occurred on the skin of fruits and in beer. 



The first set of experiments indicate that yeast, when taken into the stomach 

 of rabbits, causes neither discomfort nor lesions in any organ, even when a fer- 

 mentable substance be eaten at the same time. They also indicate that certain 

 organisms —yeasts, bacteria and moulds — can pass through the intestinal tract 

 without being killed, though from the slowness of growth and the weakness of the 

 fermentation, their vigor must be somewhat impaired. 



The second set of experiments indicate that of the common yeasts those used 

 possessed no toxic properties for rabbits or guinea-pigs, neither did they multiply 

 when introduced into the animal body, and in the case of four of them, they must 

 have been destroyed within 48 hours, though these same yeasts were very vigor- 

 ous at the same temperature outside the body. 



-Busse. Centralb. fur Bakt. und Parasitenk., Bd. XVII, 1895, p. 719. 

 tRabinowitsch.L. Centralb. fur Bakt. und Parasitenk., Bd. XVIII, 1 Abt., 1895, p.580- 



