THE TRANSMISSION OF MORGAN'S BACILLUS 19 



469 children suffering from infantile enteritis in the 

 wards and out-patient departments of the various 

 London children's hospitals. As a result, he isolated 

 a micro-organism, which he named M&rgan /, and 

 this he found predominating conspicuously over all 

 other germs in this disease. Young rats and rabbits 

 were fed on this bacillus, and they died of acute 

 enteritis. Then four monkeys were given the germ 

 with their food, and they died with symptoms exactly 

 like those of the children in the hospitals. 



The question of the transmission of this bacillus 

 from one child to another was next considered by 

 Morgan and Ledingham. A number of flies caught 

 in houses in which there had been children sick 

 with infantile enteritis were examined, and the same 

 germ was found in several. The flies were killed 

 with ether vapour and their bodies examined, and 

 the germ found in many instances within the flies 

 caught. 



But because infected flies were found after the 

 onset of the cold weather in the autumn, and because 

 some infected flies were found in a house in the 

 country where no child suffering from the disease 

 happened to be discovered, and because some doctors 

 believed that the fty-curves and the disease-curves do 

 not correspond, this research seems to have been rele- 

 gated into the background. 1 It should have been named 

 as one of the most important investigations of the 

 present century. Flies may live for weeks in the cold 

 weather in fact, we know they do ; but the majority die. 

 And there may be enteritis carriers, as we know there 



1 Since this book was sent to press, au excellent dissertation entitled 

 "The Insect Porters of Disease," by Dr. C. J. Martin, F.R.S., has appeared 

 in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet of January 4, 1913. 



