190 BACTERIOLOGY. 



lose their virulence, and this change comes 

 about more quickly in pure water than in 

 polluted water. Infection on the other hand is 

 favored by a diseased condition of the mucous 

 lining of the stomach, and Metschnikoff has 

 discovered that the infection of animals can be 

 accomplished more easily if other microbes are 

 inoculated simultaneously with the cholera 

 germ. 



Intestinal alterations like those observed in 

 cholera may also be brought about by the intra- 

 venous inoculation of putrid fluids, as Hem- 

 mer, Virchow, and many others noticed long 

 ago. R. Fischel observed similar appearances 

 in children, as a consequence of sepsis. 



Cholera nostras. This disease is not to be 

 attributed to a single bacterial species. The 

 fact seems to be that several ceco-parasites, 

 under special conditions which serve to create 

 a predisposition, become able to invade the 

 body, multiply there and form poison. A case 

 of this sort was communicated by me in 1887: 

 a person, after drinking very cold beer while 

 irr a heated condition, became the subject of a 

 violent cholera-like attack with typical rice- 

 water stools, an effect that was brought about 

 by the ordinary colon bacillus, B. coli com- 

 munis. The same bacteria have been sub- 

 sequently often found in summer diarrhoea, 



