190 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



violent sneezing then sets in, and a strongly corrosive 

 thin discharge, with which much epithelium is thrown 

 off. This increases, after a few hours, to a painful inflam- 

 mation of the mucous membrane and of the outside 

 of the nose, and excites fever with severe headache 

 and great depression, if the patient cannot withdraw 

 himself from the heat and the sunshine. In a cool room, 

 however, these symptoms vanish as quickly as they 

 come on, and there then only remains for a few days a 

 lessened discharge and soreness, as if caused by the loss 

 of epithelium. I remark, by the way, that in all my 

 other years I had very little tendency to catarrh or 

 catching cold, while the hay fever has never failed 

 during the twenty-one years of which I have spoken, 

 and has never attacked me earlier or later in the year 

 than the times named. The condition is extremely 

 troublesome, and increases, if one is obliged to be much 

 exposed to the sun, to an excessively severe malady. 



' The curious dependence of the disease on the 

 season of the year suggested to me the thought that 

 organisms might be the origin of the mischief. In ex- 

 amining the secretion I regularly found, in the last five 

 years, certain vibrio-like bodies in it, which at other 

 times I could not observe in my nasal secretion. . . . 

 They are very small, and can only be recognised with 

 the immersion-lens of a very good Hartnack's micro- 

 scope. It is characteristic of the common isolated single 

 joints that they contain four nuclei in a row, of which 

 two pairs are more closely united. The length of the 

 joints is 0-004 millimetre. Upon the warm objective- 

 stage they move with moderate activity, partly in mere 

 vibration, partly shooting backwards and forwards in 

 the direction of their long axis ; in lower temperatures 

 they are very inactive. Occasionally one finds them 

 arranged in rows upon each other, or in branching 



