MICROPHYTES FOUND IN THE BLOOD, 401 



which Dr. Klein had observed as indicative that the bacilli which 

 had been introduced into the system of the animals had induced 

 the disease. Should this inference prove to be correct, it is 

 somewhat difficult to understand on what grounds so emphatic 

 an opinion could have been expressed as to their specific action. 

 It does not appear that Leisering in his account of like organisms, 

 in apparently the same disease of the pig (as already mentioned), 

 had found them in any but fatal cases. 



I. — The evidence which has heen adduced shotoing that the viru- 

 lence of Sej)ti?iotis Substances is not dejiendent on vegetable 

 life. 



Seeing that so much evidence can be adduced to show that 

 these organisms, whether bacilli or spirilla, are but epi-pheno- 

 mena, the specific change in the fluids of the body having taken 

 2ilace before the slightest indication of their presence can be 

 detected, the question which naturally suggest itself is : whether 

 sufficient evidence exists to show that inoculations can be effected 

 with like material in the absence of such living organisms. The 

 reply to this question, so far as anthracoid and cognate diseases 

 are concerned, is distinctly in the affirmative ; but, with regard 

 to recurrent fever, it cannot be as yet definitely stated that the 

 malady is iuoculable, so that for the present it may be left out of 

 consideration. 



When Brauell pubHshed his paper in ' Virchow^s Archiv ' in 

 1858, detailing his experiments to prove that splenic fever was an 

 inoculable disease, he further stated the opinion that the organ- 

 ism found in the blood could not be the carriers of the virus, 

 seeing that blood not containing bacilli had been found to gene- 

 rate the disease. Bouley has arrived at a similar conclusion, and 

 Bollinger, who has repeated BrauelPs and Bouley's experiments, 

 lias also shown that the disease may exist without the presence 

 of bacilli in the blood, that such blood will induce the disease in 

 other animals, and that even under such circumstances organisms 

 may develop in the blood of the inoculated animal, and be 

 detected during life as w^ell as after death.^ 



Similar observations have been made with regard to septicfemia 

 and the allied disease-conditions associated with the presence of 

 bacilli, some of which have been already referred to. M. Colin, 

 for example, found that tottVo-it of a drop of septicsemia-blood 

 would kill a rabbit in 36 hours when inoculated by means of a 

 lancet ; that the virulent property existed before the appearance 

 of rod-bacteria ; and that the pernicious character of the fluid 



1 0. Bollinger, 'Zur Pathologic des MUzbrandes,' Miinclieu, 1872. 

 Quoted in ' Schmidt's Jahrbiicher,' Bd. clxxi, p. 205, 1875. 



