1896.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 255 



the vibrissa? lining- them, and all crusts forming there are 

 g-enerally swarming with bacteria. The vibrissa? seem to 

 act as a filter, and a larg-e number of microbes meet their 

 fate in the moist meshes of the hair which fringes the ves- 

 tibule. This arrangement not only arrests the ingress of 

 g-erms; but by the action of cilated epithelium those which 

 have penetrated into the nose are rapidly ejected. — Medical 

 Record. 



Microbe of Scurvy. — Teste and Beri {Gaz. degli Osped.) 

 have isolated from a frag^ment of tissue taken from the 

 g-um of a scorbutic patient, a micro-organism which they 

 believe to be the cause of scurvy. The microbe is round, 

 stains in all the aniline dyes, but resists Gram's stain. Its 

 cultures liquefy g^elatin, and gfive rise to a sawdust-like 

 deposit. Guinea-pig"s and rabbits inoculated with these 

 cultures have a rise of temperature, and the microscopy 

 shows hemorrhag"ic stains in various parts of the body, and 

 nodules of connective tissue, new formation. The above 

 results were obtained in three out of four experiments. In 

 the fourth, the authors attribute the neg-ative results to the 

 fact that the patient had improved considerably under 

 treatment. 



Microbic Origin of Rickets. — Microli {Gaz. Med. di 

 Torino) believes that this disease is caused by the effect of 

 ordinary pyog^enic org^anisms upon the osseous and ner- 

 vous system. Clinically he finds support for this theory 

 in the fact that rickets develops independently of social 

 conditions. It frequently beg^ins with eczema, boils, or 

 intestinal catarrh; occasionally occurs epidermically, and 

 is accompanied with fever, polyarthritic and bone pains, 

 hydrocephalus, marasmus, and paresis of lower extremi- 

 ties. Pyog"enic org"anisms have been found in the bones 

 and central nervous system of rickety children. Experi- 

 mental injections of pyogens into the bones and epiphysical 

 cartilages of young- rabbits produced in some cases com- 

 mon osteom3'elitis, but in other cases an osteomyelitis 

 without traces of suppuration, with hypertrophy of cartil- 

 ages analog-ous to that of rickets and marasmus. 



