176 THE BACTERIA IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. [CF. 



elusion that the comma-bacilli are not constant in cholera. They in 

 their Report (printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 247, 

 p. 173) state that they are unable to accept the comma-bacillus of Koch 

 as causally connected with cholera Asiatica. They look upon the 

 comma-bacilli as probably connected with the premonitory diarrhoea ; 

 but these gentlemen furnish no proof for this assumption. Messrs. Roy, 

 Brown, and Sherrington describe and figure in sections through the 

 mucous membrane of the cholera intestine preserved for some months 

 hyphse or mycelial threads which they were told by Mr. Gardiner were 

 the hyphse of Chitridiacea, and they are not disinclined to look upon 

 these as causally connected with cholera Asiatica. I have good reasons 

 for saying (see Nat^^re for December 23, 1886, and the British Med. 

 Journal vt December 25, 1886) that what these gentlemen figured and 

 described (in Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 247) are the hyphoe 

 of common mould which must have grown into the tissue during the 

 process of preserving the material. 



It is fair to state that Mr. Gardiner has subsequently (Native, January 

 20, 1887) altered his view, inasmuch as he considered the organism 

 shown to him in Professor Roy's specimens, i.e. moniliform threads with 

 terminal nodular swellings, to resemble an involution form of a bacterium. 

 Still later (Nature, February 3, 1887) he implied that to harmonise 

 what he saw in Professor Roy's specimen with what has been figured by 

 Roy, Brown, and Sherrington in their Report (Proc. Roy. Society, 247, 

 p. 173), i.e. distinctly branched mycelial threads, both might belong to 

 a form similar to Cladothrix dichotoma. I have not the least doubt 

 from actual observation that the branched mycelial threads figured in 

 the Report of Messrs. Roy, Brown, and Sherrington are threads of 

 common mould. 



Such appearances cannot be found in sections through the cholera 

 intestine preserved under the necessary precautions in alcohol, as for 

 instance if small bits of the intestine taken out soon after death are 

 placed at once in a large quantity of strong alcohol. As a matter of 

 fact Messrs. Roy, Sherrington, and Brown missed these forms in cover- 

 glass specimens made of the contents of the cholera intestine. Messrs. 

 Sherrington and Rouse, who studied cholera in Italy in 1886, failed to 

 find any of these hyphae in the cholera intestine. Dr. Shakespeare of 

 Philadelphia studied in 1886 cholera in Spain and India, and in his 

 Report to his Government, arrived at the conclusion that while Koch's 

 comma-bacilli are always present in the early stages, and therefore are 

 of great diagnostic value, their causal relation to cholera has not been 

 satisfactorily established. 



