32 THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CH. 



the intestine, say the ileum, constained constantly in the acute 

 stages of the disease numbers of comma-bacilli, I should con- 

 sider this as of fundamental importance, and I should go so 

 far as to say that one of the most important links of the 

 chain of proof that they are the cause of the disease had 

 been established. I have therefore paid particular attention 

 to this point, and from a very careful examination of an 

 enormous number of preparations made of the ileum and 

 other parts of the intestine of acute and typical cases of 

 cholera, I am able most positively to assert that nothing of 

 the sort occurs 1 . Fresh sections and sections of the tissues 

 hardened in alcohol or Miiller's fluid, stained with the 

 different aniline dyes by the usual methods employed for the 

 demonstration of bacteria in tissues, were prepared and 

 examined ; the cases were typical and atypical ; some were 

 cases that died before the first day was over, all the symp- 

 toms during life were very characteristic, on post-mortem 



1 Koch, in his second paper, "Further Researches on Cholera," 

 (Zweite Conferenz zur Erorterung der Choltrajrage, Berlin, May, 1885) 

 says of myself: " . . . Even before he went to India his judgment of 

 my statements was formed. He attempted, at that time, to show that 

 I had contradicted myself ; that I had, in Egypt, compared the bacteria 

 found in the wall of the small intestine with the bacilli of glanders, 

 but that the latter were not curved, but straight bacilli ; then all at 

 once, in India, the straight bacilli had become curved ones." What 

 may have prompted Koch to write this I am unable to say, but this 

 much I can positively say, that at no time or place, neither before I 

 went out to India, nor in India, nor since my return, have I said or 

 written anything of the sort. Koch has evidently been misinformed, 

 and after this I am under the impression that Koch has entered on 

 a criticism of my work without having read what I said. I am sorry to 

 think that he ascribes to me anything so absurd ; for it would no doubt 

 be absurd on my part to try to make out that the glanders-bacilli were 

 not curved after having myself figured them as curved (see my Micro- 

 organisms and Disease, Fig. 62, third edition, 1886) ; and it would be 

 equally absurd and incorrect on my part to say that Koch had stated 

 while in Egypt that the cholera-bacilli were straight, but that all at 

 once, in India, they became curved. I am sure such criticisms 

 would not have been applied by Koch to myself if he had read what 

 I did say. 



