466 BACTERIOLOGY. 



circulating blood to only a limited degree, for, after the 

 injection of much larger amounts of the putrid fluid 

 into the blood of the animal, death usually ensued in 

 from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The blood 

 drawn from the animal just before death contained the 

 living bacteria of putrefaction, and underwent decom- 

 position. They attributed the germicidal phenomenon 

 to the action of the " ozonized oxygen of the corpuscles 

 of the blood." 



In 1882 Kauschenbach 1 demonstrated that, in the 

 process of coagulation, fibrin was formed not as a spe- 

 cific product of the action of the colorless elements of 

 the blood alone, but also as a result of the combined 

 action between all animal protoplasms and healthy blood 

 plasma, and that in the process there was always a dis- 

 integration of the leucocytes that were present. In 

 1884 Groth 2 demonstrated further that such a disinte- 

 gration of leucocytes occurred in normal circulating 

 blood, though here it was not accompanied by coagula- 

 tion. The results of these observations suggested the 

 question : Does such a disintegration occur when vege- 

 table protoplasm is introduced into the blood ? For the 

 purpose of answering this question, Grohmann, 3 a pupil 

 of Alexander Schmidt, undertook to study the action of 

 the circulating blood upon the vegetable protoplasm of 

 bacteria. 



He noticed that clotting of the blood of the horse 

 was very much accelerated by the addition to it of cer- 



1 Ueber die Wechselwirkung zwischen Protoplasma und Blutplasma. Dis- 

 sertation, Dorpat, 1882. 



2 Ueber die Schicksale der farblosen Elemente in kreiseridem Blut. Disser- 

 tation, Dorpat, 1884. 



3 Ueber die Einwirkung des zellenfreien Blutplasma auf einige pflanzliche 

 Mikro-organismen. Dissertation, Dorpat, 1884. 



