TYPHOID FEVER. 263 



in cloths wet with a solution of bichlorid of mercury and 

 kept for three days in a warm room, in order that a con- 

 siderable and massive development of the bacilli may take 

 place. 



Typhoid fever is a disease which is communicable to 

 animals with difficulty. They are not affected by bacilli 

 in fecal matter or in pure culture mixed with the food, 

 and are not diseased by the injection into them of blood 

 from typhoid patients. Gaffky failed completely to pro- 

 duce any symptoms suggestive of typhoid fever in rab- 

 bits, guinea-pigs, white rats, mice, pigeons, chickens, 

 and calves, and found that Java apes could feed daily 

 upon food polluted with typhoid germs for a considerable 

 time, yet without symptoms. The introduction of pure 

 cultures into the abdominal cavity of most animals is 

 without effect. Frankel and Simon, however, found that 

 when pure cultures are injected into mice, rabbits, and 

 guinea-pigs the animals die. Many observers attribute 

 the deaths in such cases to the toxin injected with the 

 bacilli, and consider it entirely independent of the living 

 organisms injected. In such fatal cases, however, the 

 bacilli are found in large numbers in the blood, making 

 the condition resemble septicemia. 



When animals are treated in the manner described in 

 the chapter upon Cholera i. e. the gastric contents ren- 

 dered alkaline, a large quantity of laudanum injected 

 into the peritoneal cavity, and the bacilli introduced 

 through an esophageal catheter Klemperer, Levy, and 

 others found that there was produced an intestinal con- 

 dition which very much resembled typhoid as it occurs in 

 man. The virulence of the bacillus can be very greatly 

 increased by rapid passage from guinea-pig to guinea-pig. 



In the experiments of Chantemesse and Widal the 

 symptoms following the injection of virulent culture into 

 guinea-pigs were briefly as follows : ' ' Very shortly after 

 the inoculation there is a rise of temperature, which 

 continues from one to four hours, and is succeeded by a 

 depression of the temperature, which continues to the 



