INTERMITTENT FEVER. 323 



three instances. He is therefore anxious to make 

 more extended researches whenever the opportu- 

 nity may offer, and will not fail to report promptly 

 any future observations more in correspondence 

 with those of the German and Italian investigators 

 named. 



In the report of the experimental investigation 

 referred to, the following summary statement is 

 made : 



" Among the organisms found upon the surface of 

 swamp-mud, near New Orleans, and in the gutters 

 within the city limits, are some which closely resemble, 

 and perhaps are identical with, the Bacillus malarice of 

 Klebs and Tommasi-Crucleli ; but there is no satisfactory 

 evidence that these or any of the other bacterial organ- 

 isms found in such situations, when injected beneath the 

 skin of a rabbit, give rise to a malarial fever correspond- 

 ing with the ordinary paludal fevers to which man. is 

 subject. 



" The evidence upon which Klebs and Tommasi-Cru- 

 deli have based their claim of the discovery of a Bacillus 

 malarice cannot be accepted as sufficient ; () because 

 in their experiments and in my own the temperature 

 curve in the rabbits experimented upon has in no case 

 exhibited a marked and distinctive paroxysmal char- 

 acter ; (6) because healthy rabbits sometimes exhibit 

 diurnal variations of temperature (resulting apparently 

 from changes in the external temperature) as marked 

 as those shown in their charts ; (c) because changes in 

 the spleen such as they describe are not evidence of 

 death from malarial fever, inasmuch as similar changes 

 occur in the spleens of rabbits dead from septicaemia 

 produced by the subcutaneous injection of human saliva; 



