122 THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CH. 



the symptoms increase in vehemence so the bile-secretion, 

 like the other secretions urine, saliva, gastric and pancreatic 

 juice ceases ? One could understand the reasonableness of 

 such an idea, if the premonitory symptoms of cholera were 

 characterised by suppression of bile-secretion, but this is not 

 the case ; most of the secretions of the liver, kidney, saliva, 

 stomach, and pancreas, cease after the disease has well set 

 in. One might just as reasonably suppose that ligaturing 

 the ureter would be a conditio sine qua. non for the success of 

 the experiment of artificially producing cholera, on occount 

 of the suppression of secretion of urine in cholera. As a 

 matter of fact Nicati and Rietsch, in their experiments on 

 guinea-pigs, Koch in his experiments on dogs and guinea- 

 pigs, van Ermengem in his experiments on guinea-pigs, did 

 not employ this mode of experimentation. 



Well, then, Nicati and Rietsch opened the abdomen of 

 dogs, ligatured the bile-duct, and injected then into the 

 duodenum cultivations of the choleraic comma-bacilla. The 

 animals died ; their intestine contained fluid with flakes of 

 detached epithelium ; and the comma-bacilli were found to 

 have increased enormously in numbers. This was put down 

 as cholera, due to the increase and action of the comma- 

 bacilli. Was anything more extraordinary ever heard of in 

 experimental pathology? The bile duct is ligatured, the 

 peritoneal cavity and intestine are exposed, inflammation of 

 the bowels ssts in, with fluid evacuations and detached 

 epithelium, and this is put down as cholera, and as due to 

 the comma-bacilli introduced. I venture to say that these 

 symptoms can be as readily reproduced without the comma- 

 bacilli. The comma-bacilli are found to have increased in 

 numbers, but surely this should be the natural and inevitable 

 result if they are introduced into an intestine in which disease 

 is set up : such an intestine is their natural breeding- 



