472 



SPIRILLUM CHOLER/E ASIATICS. 



killed by drying. The population should also be 

 instructed as to the circumstances which favour or 

 hinder infection, more especially as to the influence 

 of careful cleanliness, as to care in preparation of the 

 food and in the selection of drinking water, and as to 

 the hurtful influence of excesses and of even the mildest 

 gastric disturbances. Drainage, proper removal of 

 waste materials, and a good water supply, are also, 

 from the contagionistic point of view, excellent prophy- 

 lactic measures for a town, the basis of these regulations 

 being, however, somewhat different from that of the 

 localists ; the chief advantage of these arrangements is 

 not that they lead to cleansing of the soil from putre- 

 fying materials, or freeing of it from materials which 

 could nourish the lower organisms, but it is the prompt 

 removal of the infective agents, and the diminution of 

 the opportunities for infection. 



Morphological 

 characters. 



Spirillum Finkler and Prior. 

 (Vibrio proteus.) 



From the dejecta of patients suffering from cholera 

 nostras which had been kept for some time, Finkler 

 and Prior isolated a spirillum which resembles the 

 comma bacillus of Asiatic cholera, but can nevertheless 

 ^ be very readily distinguished 

 from it, more especially by 

 means of a number of dif- 

 ferences in its mode of 

 growth. 



As a rule the individual 

 curved bacilli, which when 

 united together form the 

 spirilla, are the chief forms 

 present. The curved bacilli 

 are somewhat longer and thicker than Koch's comma 

 bacilli ; their thickness is not so regular as the latter, 

 but on the contrary they appear oftener somewhat pointed 

 at the ends, and thicker in the middle. Not uncommonly 



Fig. 124. Spirillum of Fiuklcr 

 and Prior X 700. 



