FISSION FUNGI AS CAUSAL AGENTS OF DISEASE. 645 



animals, within twenty-four to forty- eight hours. It is 

 only the spores of saprophytes, for example of bacillus 

 subtilis, which evidently play the part of completely 

 indifferent foreign elements, that were found alive and 

 capable of development after about three months in the 

 endothelial cells of the capillaries of the spleen and liver. 



When the bacteria do not enter in large numbers nor 

 directly into the blood, but in small numbers through 

 slight injuries of the skin or of the mucous membrane, 

 a similar battle between the bacteria and the tissue and 

 endothelial cells of the immediate neighbourhood, 

 probably also occurs in the first instance, and thus all 

 those bacteria are pathogenic for a definite species of 

 animal which, after their contact with these cells, are 

 able to grow and multiply, while the cells, on the con- 

 trary, undergo pathological alterations or die. 



We obtain, also, a further insight into the causes of 

 the pathogenic action of bacteria by some experiments, 

 which will shortly be published by Wyssokowitsch, in 

 which he succeeded, by artificially lowering the energy 

 of the cells of the body, in enabling bacteria which, 

 under ordinary circumstances, are not pathogenic for 

 the animals employed, to multiply rapidly and occupy 

 the whole of the living body. Such a weakening of the Non-patko- 

 body resulted, for example, by the employment of high 

 temperatures approaching closely the body temperature ^ n 

 by which the tissue change was as much as possible artificially 

 reduced ; further, by certain mineral poisons, such as wea 

 chroniate of ammonia ; by far the most completely and 

 rapidly, however, by some of the ptomaines furnished 

 by bacteria. The products furnished by bacillus crassus Influence of 

 sputigenus, by bacillus Neapolitanus, &c., act apparently p 

 on the walls of the capillary vessels, and alter the endo- 

 thelial cells in such a manner that small quantities of 

 micrococcus tetragenus, Finkler's spirillum, bacillus 

 pneumoniae, and other species of bacteria, not at all 

 injurious to normal rabbits, can multiply in enormous 

 numbers after the injection of these products, are not 

 completely removed from the blood stream, and do not 

 die in the endothelial cells. 



