TEXT-BOOK OF BACTERIOLOGY. 295 



Bub it has already been pointed out that the transmission to 

 animals had no favorable prospects from the start, for which rea- 

 son we are convinced that, in view of the nearly regular, and espe- 

 cially of the exclusive occurrence of bacilli in typhoid fever, they 

 are in fact the cause of the disease. 



How does the bacillus get into the body, and how does it pro- 

 duce in it the disease with its accompanying symptoms? Two 

 totally different views regarding the cause and spread of the 

 pestilence exist, almost in the same manner and sense as with 

 cholera asiatica. Some maintain that the poison is not transferred 

 from man to man, but that it must previously acquire a kind of 

 maturity in the soil and thus be enabled to obtain infectious power. 

 It is then to enter the body with the air and to be taken up by the 

 respiratory organs. Special relations between changing conditions 

 of the soil and the appearance of the disease are said to take place, 

 and local as well as temporal predisposition to be highly important ; 

 the fluctuations in the position of the underground water are said 

 to follow the changing degree of the disease like the hands of a 

 registering apparatus, and a proper conformity between these 

 apparently so divergent views is said to be easily established. 



And when the cause of typhoid fever, previously only pre- 

 sumed, assumed tangible shape in the bacillus, its vital properties 

 would not harmonize (just as with cholera) with epidemiological 

 facts. Nor could it be proved that the bacillus passed through a 

 special period of transition in the soil, nor could it be at all 

 discovered there. The possibility of its finding the conditions for 

 developing in the upper strata of the earth must certainly be ad- 

 mitted, for we know that it can lead a saprophytic life. But it is 

 (for reasons holding good likewise with cholera) improbable that 

 it should rise into the atmosphere and enter our body through the 

 lungs. 



Nor are facts wanting that point to very different ways of 

 spreading. The typhus bacilli can live in the water and its exist- 

 ence there has even been directly proved. Milk, too, is a congenial 

 place for development, and there can be no doubt, after Hesse/s 

 investigations, that still other foods offer it a welcome ground. 

 The intestine, moreover, is the spot where the poison of the disease 

 causes the first and severest changes. These observations have 

 led to another view regarding the mode of infection, it being be- 

 lieved that it proceeds similarly as with cholera. 



The diseased person casts off in his discharges a number of vital 

 bacilli which, according to Uffelmann's experiments, remain in that 

 neighborhood for many months. The bearers of the infectious 



