34 THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CH. 



nearly twelve hours; in addition to this the post-mortem 

 was made two hours and a half after death ; the tempera- 

 ture of the air was above 75 F. No wonder that under all 

 these circumstances the tissue of the bowels should have 

 become invaded by micro-organisms. In another case of 

 acute typical cholera, where the post-mortem had been 

 made fourteen minutes after death, but where the patient 

 had been moribund from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m., sections through 

 the hardened Fever's glands andmucosaoftheileum showed 

 the epithelium of the surface as well as that lining the Lieber- 

 kiihn's follicles bodily loosened and raised from the mucosa, 

 but fixed in position during hardening. While there was 

 total absence of comma-bacilli here or anywhere else in the 

 mucous membrane and lymph-follicles, there were neverthe- 

 less in some places on the surface minute groups of putre- 

 factive bacillus subtilis, and from here they could be traced into 

 the spaces resulting from the detachment of the epithelium 

 of the Lieberkiihn's follicles from the membrana propria. 

 And even capillary blood-vessels of the lymph-follicles near 

 the denuded surface were found crowded with putrefactive 

 bacilli and micrococci. In a third typical case (death after 

 ten hours, post-mortem after half an hour), there were pre- 

 sent numbers of straight putrefactive bacilli in the tissue of 

 the villi and around the bottom of the Lieberkiihn's follicles, 

 but only here and there could a comma-bacillus be found 

 close to the epithelium of the surface. 



From this then we conclude that comma-bacilli as well 

 as other bacteria can find entrance into the tissue of the 

 intestine, but that this in a measure depends on the state 

 of disorganisation of the intestine, and the time that elapses 

 between the stage of " agony " and actual death. That the 

 comma-bacilli take the lead in penetrating the tissue, both 



