96 THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CH. 



Finkler's and Koch's comma-bacilli. On potato they do not 

 grow at all. I have myself had an opportunity, thanks to 

 Dr. Crookshank, of examining and cultivating these cheese- 

 comma-bacilli or cheese-spirilla, and am able to say that in 

 gelatine cultures they are difficult to distinguish from the 

 choleraic comma-bacilli. 



IV. As has been already stated, Koch in his first pamphlet 

 embodying the results of his investigations on cholera in 

 Egypt, India, and France, showed that he was then unaware of 

 the existence of comma-bacilli other than those in Asiatic 

 cholera, with the exception of one instance that of a salt- 

 water lake in Calcutta, in which he found comma-bacilli 

 that looked like choleraic comma-bacilli, but did not behave 

 like them in. cultivation he had never seen any bacteria 

 that looked like the comma-bacilli. This being the case, 

 our finding comma-bacilli in the intestinal contents of cases 

 of diarrhoea, dysentery, and phthisis seemed not without 

 interest. Hence the strong adverse criticism expressed by 

 Mr. Watson Cheyne during the discussion on cholera at the 

 Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1885, at my having mentioned 

 such a fact without saying how these comma-bacilli behave 

 under cultivation in gelatine, was not quite justified. The 

 statement made by me in the preliminary Report of the 

 English Cholera Commission, that comma-bacilli do occur 

 -in intestinal diseases other than Asiatic cholera, was in 

 relation to Koch's statement that in no other disease of the 

 alimentary canal, nor in any other circumstance except the 

 above-quoted salt-water lake in Calcutta had he ever seen 

 bacteria that looked like the comma-bacilli. The comma- 

 bacilli which we saw in the intestinal contents of cases of 

 diarrhoea, dysentery, and phthisis, looked thicker and longer 

 than those in cholera, and their mode of growth in gelatine 



