77 



ralure - to the Serum Institute, where they were placed in the 

 incubator about an hour after the samples were taken. 



In order to get an idea of the rapidity at which Pfeiffer's 

 bacillus is destroyed in the lungs after the patient's death, I 

 carried out the following survey. 



20 autopsies, which yielded positive findings of Pfeiffer's ba- 

 cillus, were made 6, 12, 18 18, 22, 22, 24, 24, 26, 30, 32, 34, 34, 35, 36, 

 36, 36, 38, 38, and 38 hours after death respectively. Instances of the 

 growth of Pfeiffer's bacillus in large quantities occurred just as fre- 

 quently among the late as among the early autopsies. 



For the sake of comparison it may be stated that 18 autopsies, 

 in which the microbe was not found, took place 14, 21 26, 26, 

 27, 27, 28, 30, 30, 31, 33, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, and 54 hours after 

 death respectively. 



These results indicate that Pfeiffer's bacillus is not par- 

 ticularly prone to die out in the first day and a half after 

 the patient's death, (for if such were the case the positive 

 findings would be chiefly met with among the earliest au- 

 topsies), and we may perhaps venture to assume therefore, 

 that practically the same result would have been obtained even 

 if the examinations had been made immediately after death. 



From the cultivation experiments it appears that Pfeiffer's 

 bacillus occurs with rather greater frequency in the autumn 

 and winter epidemic than in the summer epidemic. As the 

 technique of cultivation was not so good at first as it became 

 later on, this conclusion can scarcely be drawn from this 

 evidence. A comparison between the microscopic pictures of 

 the sputa from the two epidemics would be a more rational 

 procedure, because this does not depend on any special tech- 

 nique which needs practice, and may therefore make a direct 

 comparison between the preparations from the two periods. 



It appears then that out of about 50 samples of sputa 

 which were examined microscopically during the summer epi- 

 demic, only two contained bacteria that could be assumed 

 to be Pfeiffer's bacilli (the preparations were kept, and on re- 

 examination Pfeiffer's bacilli were not found in greater number). 

 On dividing the sputa from the autumn and winter epidemic 

 (with the exclusion of the „repeated examinations") into b 

 groups of about 50, we get however, 10, 8, and. 9 obviously 



