vii.] PRODUCTION OF CHOLERA. 125 



van Ermengem describes on p. 77 of his paper is quite 

 compatible with this. If proof were needed it is furnished 

 by the fact that some of the animals succumbed in a few 

 hours ; this could hardly be ascribed to anything else except 

 chemical poisoning, as contrasted with a real infection with 

 an incubation-period such as is known in the case of other 

 infectious diseases. There are now known a good many 

 cases of acute poisoning in the human subject (sausage 

 poisoning, mackerel poisoning, poisoning by over-ripe fruit, 

 tinned salmon, tinned sheep's tongue, &c.) investigated on 

 various occasions within recent years, in which the symptoms 

 of acute gastro-enteric disturbance set in after a few hours. 

 Other symptoms, as the stadium algidum, cramps, pain 

 in abdomen, fall of temperature, disturbed respiration, 

 were all present in these cases. Brieger in his pamphlet 

 on the Ptomaines (Berlin, 1885) has produced these symp- 

 toms in animals by the various alkaloids, analysed and 

 isolated by him from various food-stuffs, that had undergone 

 putrefaction. The guinea-pigs thus experimented upon by 

 van Ermengem showed on post-mortem examination of their 

 intestines amongst numerous septic bacilli and micrococci a 

 few of the choleraic comma-bacilli. Two observations made 

 by van Ermengen (I.e. pp. 78, 80) deserve special notice, (i.) 

 On keeping the intestinal contents of such a guinea-pig for 

 twenty-four hours in a moist chamber, it became crowded 

 with the choleraic comma-bacilli. (2.) One of several animals 

 which had received fractions of a drop of a serum-culture into 

 the duodenum remained well. This animal, nine days after 

 the inoculation, voided in its stools still living choleraic 

 comma-bacilli; from this it follows that the comma- 

 bacilli, although they must have lived and multiplied in 

 this animal's intestine for nine days, were unable to produce 

 any disease. 



