1895.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 367 



tion. I have recovered the organism from the blood of these ani- 

 mals, which is found to be heavily laden with them. — Buffalo 

 ]\Ied. and Surg. Jour. 



BACTERIOLOGY. 



Micro-Organisms in the Healthy Nose. — Among the 

 interesting i'aets we owe to bacteriology is the discovery that 

 so-called health}^ persons are the lodging places of myriads of 

 bacteria, powdering their skins, dwelling in the cavities and ori- 

 fices of the body, mouth, nose, throat, intestines, etc. It is cal- 

 culated that 500 litres of air, bearing on a low average l.oOO 

 bacteria, are inspired every hour. These microbes of the 

 healthy nose have been investigated by Hajek, Lowenberg, 

 Frankel, von Besser, Paulsen, St. Clair, Thomson and Hewlett, 

 among others. The latter authors arrive at the following con- 

 clusions: 1, the vestibule is lined with skin furnished with hairs 

 and Avith sudoriferous and sebaceous glands, and is not part of 

 the nose cavity proper — only leading to it; hence in bacterio- 

 logic examinations of the nasal fossae a distinction must be 

 made between the vestibule and the mucous cavitv proper ; 2, 

 contamination from the lining of the vestil)ule is difficult to 

 avoid, even when this source of error is realized ; 3, in the dust 

 and crusts of mucus among the vibrissa? of healthy subjects 

 micro-organisms are never absent — as a rule they are abundant; 

 4, on the Schneiderian membrane the reverse is the case since 

 in over 80 per cent, of the cases no organisms whatever were 

 found and the mucus was completely sterile ; 5, the occurrence 

 of pathogenic organisms on the Schneiderian membrane is 

 quite exceptional. 



While the number of individual cases in these researches is 

 hardly large enough to be conclusive, still, if they are corrobor- 

 ated, it would seem that nearly all the microbes of inspired air 

 are arrested either by the moist surface and the vibrissse of the 

 vestibule, or that, as has l)een already claimed l)y Wiirtz and 

 Lermoyez, the nasal mucus is germicidal. 



Typhoid Bacilli in Ice-Cream. — According to the British 

 Medical Journal, an alarming outbreak of typhoid fever recentl}'' 

 occurred in Paisley, England, in which eighty-six cases were 

 traced directly to use of ice-cream manufactured by aa ice-cream 



