60 BACTERIOLOGY. 



oxidation, contribute to increase the body tem- 

 perature, i. e., to produce fever (C. Roser). 

 Fever, however, is generally merely the ac- 

 companiment of a disease, the more impor- 

 tant feature being the formation of primary 

 products by splitting which impart to individ- 

 ual diseases their characteristics. Braatz ' 

 has recently laid stress on the fact that the 

 microbes in suppurating foci are living with- 

 out atmospheric oxygen. Hueppe 2 and Scholl 3 

 had previously shown that, in cholera, the 

 comma bacilli produce relatively more poison in 

 the absence of air than in its presence, and 

 that the primary anaerobic poisons formed by 

 decomposition are destroyed upon access of oxy- 

 gen. With anaerobic cholera cultures I suc- 

 ceeded in bringing about typical diarrhoea in 

 animals used for experiment ; previously this 

 had not been accomplished. 



Absence of air has a further effect ; it 

 enables the microbes to retain for a long time 

 their power of causing fermentation, of pro- 

 ducing poison or of bringing about infection. 

 Experiments of Fajans and Hueppe 4 have 

 shown that cholera cultures retain their viru- 

 lence for weeks and even months under anaero- 



1 Deutsche med. Wochensch., 1890, No. 46. 

 ' 2 Deutsche med. Wochensch., 1891, No. 53. 

 8 Berl. klin. Wochensch., 1890, No. 11, 12. 

 * Arch. f. Hyg., XX. 



