384 BACTERIOLOGY. 



As a result of experiments performed in the Imperial 

 Health Bureau, at Berlin, it was found that the bodies 

 of guinea-pigs that had died of cholera induced by 

 Koch's method of inoculation contained no living chol- 

 era spirilla when exhumed after having been buried for 

 nineteen days in wooden boxes, or for twelve days in 

 zinc boxes. In a few that had been buried in moist 

 earth, without having been encased in boxes, when ex- 

 humed after two or three months, the results of exam- 

 inations for cholera spirilla were likewise negative. 



Kitasato, 1 in his experiments with the cholera organ- 

 ism, found that when mixed with the intestinal evacu- 

 ations of human beings under ordinary conditions they 

 lost their vitality in from a day and a half to three days. 

 If the evacuations were sterilized before the cultures 

 were mixed with them, the organisms retained their 

 vitality up to from twenty to twenty-five days. He 

 was unable to^come to any definite conclusion as to the 

 cause of these phenomena. 



It was demonstrated by Hesse 2 and by Celli 3 that 

 many substances commonly employed as food-stuffs 

 serve as favorable materials for the development of the 

 cholera organism. In his experiments upon its behavior 

 in milk Kitasato 4 found that at a temperature of 36 C. 

 the cholera spirillum developed very rapidly during the 

 first three or four hours, and outnumbered the other 

 organisms commonly found in milk. They then dimin- 

 ished in number from hour to hour as the acidity of the 

 milk increased, until finally their vitality was lost; at 

 the same time the common saprophytic bacteria in- 



1 Zeitschrift fur Hygiene, Bd. v. p. 487. 



2 Ibid , Bd. v. p. 527. 



3 Bolletino della R. Acad. Med. di. Roma, 1888. 

 * Zeitschrift fur Hygiene, Bd. v. p. 491. 



