426 BACTERIOLOGY. 



though it was kept under observation for a long time. 

 They believed this power, of rendering living organisms 

 inert, to be possessed by the circulating blood to only a 

 limited degree, for, after the injection of much larger 

 amounts of the putrid fluid into the blood of the animal, 

 death usually ensued in from twenty-four to forty-eight 

 hours. The blood drawn from the animal just before 

 death contained the living bacteria of putrefaction, and 

 underwent decomposition. They attributed the germi- 

 cidal phenomenon to the action of the " ozonized oxygen 

 of the corpuscles of the blood." 



In 1882 Rauschenbach 1 demonstrated that, in the 

 process of coagulation, fibrin was formed not as a spe- 

 cific product of the action of the colorless elements of the 

 blood alone, but also as a result of the combined action 

 between all animal protoplasm and healthy blood plasma, 

 and that in the process there was always a disintegration 

 of the leucocytes that were present. In 1884 Groth 2 

 demonstrated further that such a disintegration of leu- 

 cocytes occurred in normal circulating blood, though 

 here it was not accompanied by coagulation. The re- 

 sults of these observations suggested the question : Does 

 such a disintegration occur when vegetable protoplasm is 

 introduced into the blood? For the purpose of answer- 

 ing this question, Grohmaun, 3 a pupil of Alexander 

 Schmidt, undertook to study the action of the circulat- 

 ing blood upon the vegetable protoplasm of bacteria. 



He noticed that clotting of the blood of the horse 



1 Ueber die Wechselwirkung zwischen Protoplosma und Blutplasma. Dis- 

 sertation, Dorpat, 1882. 



2 Ueber die Schicksale der farblosen Elemente in kreisendem Blut. Disser- 

 tation, Dorpat, 1884. 



3 Ueber die Einwirkung des zellenfreien Blutplasma auf einige pflanzliche 

 Mikro-organismen. Dissertation, Dorpat, 1884. 



