CHAPTER VI. 



DIAGNOSTIC VALUE OF CHOLERAIC COMMA-BACILLI. 



So far we have seen that various species of comma-bacilli 

 are known, and that of these the choleraic comma-bacilli 

 possess certain definite characters in cultivations on nutritive 

 gelatine which are not possessed either by those of Finkler 

 and Prior, Miller, Kuisl, Deneke, Weibel and others, by one 

 form of those observed in noma, or by those which I 

 observed in the diarrhoea of man, and in the contents of the 

 caecum of the guinea-pig. Those which I observed in the 

 contents of the caecum of the monkey suffering from diarrhoea 

 have not yet been cultivated. But those which occur in the 

 fluid of the mouth, and which are probably those observed 

 by T. R. Lewis, I think I have in two instances out of many 

 succeeded in cultivating, and they appear to me to be in 

 their manner of growth in nutritive gelatine strikingly similar 

 to the choleraic comma-bacilli. Lastly, one of the two species 

 observed in noma was found to grow in gelatine in the same 

 manner as the choleraic comma-bacilli. Now it has been 

 often stated, and is by many held, that two kinds of organisms, 

 morphologically alike, and growing in a like manner in the 

 various artificial media commonly in use, must of necessity 

 be one and the same species. There would be no more 



