350 BACTERIA IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 



scarlatinous blood beneath the skin of rabbits 

 proved fatal to sixty-two out of sixty-six animals 

 experimented upon. (Query: Was this blood 

 obtained post mortem, or during the life of the 

 patients ?) 



The evidence that the rabbits, in the experi- 

 ments referred to, suffered a genuine attack of 

 scarlet fever, is not satisfactory ; and it must be 

 remembered, in estimating the scientific value of 

 such experiments, that rabbits are very subject to 

 infectious forms of septicaemia ; and that the blood 

 of man and animals, obtained post mortem from a 

 variety of acute febrile diseases, will produce sim- 

 ilar results. On the other hand, it must be ad- 

 mitted that, in its short period of incubation and 

 in other particulars, malignant scarlet fever resem- 

 bles the infectious forms of septicaemia in the 

 lower animals, shortly to be described ; and that 

 septicaemia in man is sometimes attended with a 

 scarlet eruption resembling exactly that which 

 characterizes the disease under consideration. 



The occurrence of disease, supposed to be iden- 

 tical with scarlet fever in man, among the domes- 

 tic animals, horses, dogs, cats, swine, has been 

 noted by several observers ; and in certain cases 

 communication of the disease by contagion has 

 been traced. " Thus Heim observed that a dog 

 which had lain in the same bed with a scarlatinous 

 child, was taken with fever; followed by scarla- 

 tina and desquamation." l 



1 Thomas in Ziemasen's Cyclopaedia. 



