vii.] PRODUCTION OF CHOLERA. 139 



of producing a true septicaemia infection. Thus certain 

 species of bacterium or micrococcus occurring in the 

 fluid of the human mouth were found by Pasteur and 

 Sternberg to act virulently when subcutaneously injected 

 into rabbits, other examples being the Bacterium termo 

 found by Brieger in normal faecal matter, the bacillus 

 isolated by Bienstock from normal human faecal matter, 

 and the bacillus occurring in the faeces of milk-fed infants. 

 These, as it were normal saprophytic organisms, are capable 

 on inoculation in very minute doses of producing a true infec- 

 tious disease, a sort of septicaemia, in various rodents, some 

 in rabbits, others in mice, and others again in guinea- 

 pigs. Gamaleia asserts * that using cultures of the choleraic 

 comma-bacilli after their passage through the guinea-pig, 

 (see above) and infecting pigeons with them in successive 

 series the blood of these becomes gradually the proper 

 breeding ground of the bacilli, and that fatal infection in 

 the pigeons can then be produced by the injection into 

 pigeons of a small dose of such blood. If such be the case 

 this would only prove that a septicaamic virus has hereby 

 been reared. Gamale'ia also states that, as in the case of the 

 experiments of Beumer and Peiper on the typhoid bacillus, by 

 the chemical products of the comma-bacilii immunity can be 

 produced in pigeons against the virulent cultures. Lowenthal 2 

 found that by carrying on subcultures for some time, the 

 comma-bacilli lose their virulence on mice,butcanbe acquired 

 again by cultivation in a special medium. Mice infected 

 first with weak cultures are found for a time refractory 

 against virulent culture. I have injected into the pectoral 

 muscle of pigeons several cubic centimetres of a recent 

 broth culture of choleraic comma-bacilli ; after 24 hours 



1 Semaine Medicate, No. 34. 



2 Ibid., No. 35. 



