420 



SPIRILLUM CHOLERA ASIATICS. 



Emmerich's It is necessary for the demonstration of the comma bacilli 

 denial of the ^hat the observer must be thoroughly acquainted with the 

 sence of methods employed by Koch, and where the first experiments 



comma bacilli. o f an observer give negative results, they by no means prove 

 the absence of the comma bacilli. Thus Emmerich in his 

 investigations failed at first in two cases to find the comma 

 bacilli, while in eighteen further cases he was able to demon- 

 strate their presence; as the result of this fact, which evidently 

 quite harmonises with the above-mentioned positive results, 

 Emmerich* raises one of his fundamental objections to Koch's 

 views, by stating that the comma bacilli are not constantly 

 found in cholera patients. In further confirmation of this 

 assertion Emmerich brings forward erroneously the evidence 

 of Schottelius, who, like all other authors, and like Koch him- 

 self, was not able to demonstrate the comma bacilli in all 

 cases by microscopical examination, but who distinctly states, 

 in the very paper cited by Emmerich, " that according to his 

 experience the plate method always gives a positive result 

 even in those cases in which, as the result of microscopical 

 examination of numerous specimens, 110 comma bacilli could 

 be found with certainty in the dejecta." f 



Exclusive ^ n or ^ er * demonstrate that the comma bacilli were 



limitation of exclusively limited to the cholera process, Koch has 



the comma n , . . . TT , 



bacilli to the made very numerous control investigations. He has, 

 however, never been able to find these organisms in 

 normal intestinal contents, in diarrhceic stools, or in 

 patients who had recovered from cholera. In like 

 manner the very numerous investigations made by other 

 observers in this direction have given without exception 

 a negative result; nowhere except in the dejecta of 

 Asiatic cholera, or on objects which had been soiled 

 with these dejecta (clothes, the water of a tank), have 

 the characteristic comma bacilli described by Koch been 

 found. 



'similar bacilli. O n several occasions similar comma-shaped bacilli 

 have been seen, and at first these were erroneously iden- 

 tified with Koch's comma bacilli ; but on more accurate 

 study, although morphological differenced could not 

 be made out, biological distinctions were nevertheless 

 found between these various species and the true cholera 

 bacilli, these distinctions being sufficient to allow of 



* Arch.f. Hygiene, vol. iii., p. 298. 

 f Deutsche med. Woch., Nr. 14, 1885. 



cholera pro- 

 cess 



