BACTERIA IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 259 



less fluid is introduced into the animal the symptoms of 

 poisoning which follow are less marked, and are quite 

 absent when one or at most two drops have been in- 

 jected." l 



On the other hand, the infectious disease which 

 results in certain cases from a similar inoculation 

 produces death only at the end of forty to sixty 

 hours, and is attended with definite pathological 

 lesions and the presence of a minute bacillus in 

 the blood and tissues of the infected animal. A 

 very small quantity (e. g., one-tenth of a drop) of 

 the fluid of the subcutaneous oedema, or of blood 

 from the heart of such an animal, is sufficient to 

 infect another, and Koch has fully demonstrated 

 the infectious nature of the disease by a series of 

 seventeen successive inoculations. He says : " It 

 is sufficient, in order to bring about the death of 

 the animal in about fifty hours, to pass the point 

 of a small scalpel, which has been in contact with 

 the infected blood, over a small wound in the skin." 



This distinction between septic toxaemia and in- 

 fectious septicaemia, which has been established by 

 the experimental researches of Koch, Pasteur, and 

 many others, is opposed to the results reported by 

 Rosenberger of Wurzburg, who claims to have 

 demonstrated that the various forms of septic 

 micro-organisms appear in the body of an animal 

 which has been subjected to experimental inocula- 

 tion, not because like organisms have been intro- 



1 Traumatic Infectious Diseases, Sydenham Society's translation, 

 London, 1880, p. 35. 



