v.] VARIOUS SPECIES OF COMMA-BACILLI. 103 



plate-cultivations made from the guinea-pig that had been 

 infected per duodenum with choleraic comma-bacilli, obtained 

 numerous colonies of the true choleraic comma-bacilli ; this 

 is of course proof that the choleraic comma-bacilli injected 

 were still present and had multiplied in the intestinal 

 contents. 



Nicati and van Ermengem have also found comma-bacilli 

 in the intestinal contents of the pig, rabbit, horse, and other 

 animals, but they are said to differ from Koch's comma-bacilli. 



VI. Comma-bacilli, in morphological respects indentical 

 with the choleraic comma-bacilli, have been found by my 

 colleague, Mr. Alfred Lingard, in a case of noma in a 

 child. A noma, including the whole thickness of the 

 mucous membrane of the lip of the mouth, was excised by 

 the house-surgeon at University College Hospital for Mr. 

 Lingard. On removal, cultivations were made from the 

 depth of the tissue by means of the platinum-wire, and 

 from the fresh tissues sections were cut in the ordinary way, 

 stained and mounted. 



In the sections there were found at the point of 

 demarcation between the healthy (or rather inflamed) and 

 the necrotic tissue, but situated in the former, numbers of 

 comma-bacilli pervading the tissue in clumps and streaks. 

 The cultivations in Agar-agar proved to be growths of the 

 same comma-bacilli, but in an impure state. I then, by 

 Koch's method of gelatine plate-cultivation, isolated the 

 comma-bacilli and found that they belonged to two 

 well-defined species, one smaller and one slightly larger 

 variety. The smaller variety behaved in plate-cultivations, 

 and in the cultivations in gelatine tubes established from 

 these, very much like the choleraic comma-bacilli ; the 

 slowness of the colonies' growth, the manner in which they 



