130 THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CH. 



symptoms (vomiting, purging, inflammation of the intestine, 

 its cavity filled with mucus, cramps, fall of temperature, 

 obstructed breathing, &c.). In these cases the introduction 

 of the chemical poison by the stomach seems ineffective, 

 subcutaneous and intravascular introduction, and (what 

 comes to the same) injection into the small intestine, seems 

 a conditio sine qua non. If this be the case, the gastric 

 juice would have a destructive effect on the chemical 

 poison. In another class of acute chemical poisonings, 

 also set down as ptomaine-poisoning, and in which the 

 symptoms are very much the same, the introduction of 

 the poison into the stomach is perfectly effective. Such 

 are the cases of poisoning by sausages, meat, fish, jelly, 

 pie, &c. Hardly a year passes in which numerous cases of 

 this kind of poisoning do not occur. 1 While then in the 

 first class of cases we have to deal with ptomaines, such as 

 have been investigated by Selmi and others, and particularly 

 by Brieger, being the products of putrefaction, we have in 

 the second class to deal with special fermentative processes, 

 the products of which must be of a different nature from 

 the first, since they are unaffected by the gastric juice. 



I have had to do with the investigations of such an out- 

 break of veal-pie poisoning observed by Dr. Thursfield, of 

 Shrewsbury, and I have shown that there was present a 

 species of Bacterium termo, which is incapable of life and 

 multiplication in the normal animal body, but when cultivated 

 at the ordinary temperature (18-20 C.) in nutritive gelatine 

 or in broth, rapidly multiplies and produces a chemical fer- 



1 In both instances the rapidity with which the symptoms set in clearly 

 points to an unorganized or chemical poison, in the general acceptation 

 of the term, as distinct from an organized poison requiring incubation, 

 such as we have to deal with in infectious diseases, where certain bacteria 

 are introduced into the system and by their multiplication and life-action 

 give rise to the symptoms. 



