BACTERIAL PROTEINS 41 



animal in no way distinguishes it from its un- 

 treated fellows, but at the end of this period 

 there is a marked change. The animal no 

 longer eats; its coat becomes rough; its head 

 droops; it sits in one corner of the cage in a 

 stupor; its abdominal walls become rigid and 

 pressure over this region elicits evidence of 

 pain. Now, its temperature begins to fall and 

 this decline is progressive in fatal cases. We 

 have frequently seen the temperature fall from 

 101 to 94 in from two to four hours and it 

 may reach 85 and even lower before death. A 

 rise in temperature after it begins to fall gen- 

 erally means recovery. Autopsy reveals a gen- 

 eral hemorrhagic peritonitis with a large 

 amount of bloody fluid with intact red corpus- 

 cles and leucocytes in the peritoneal cavity. 

 The parietal and visceral peritoneum are stud- 

 ded with minute punctiform hemorrhages and 

 there is more abundant hemorrhage in the great 

 omentum. The chemotactic pull of the bacilli 

 has been not only great enough to assemble 

 great numbers of leucocytes, but violent enough 

 to rupture small blood vessels. 



(b) The Cellular Proteins. When a fatal 

 quantity of the cellular protein of the colon ba- 

 cillus is injected into the peritoneal cavity of 

 a guinea-pig the progress of events is exactly 



