748 THE MICROSCOPE. 



it was discovered that the spores of the confervse had 

 been swallowed in drinking-water. Soon after this a 

 distressing stomach malady was discovered to be due to 

 the growth of another unicellular plant, Sarcina. This. 

 however, should rather be described as a compound 

 cellular plant, the first simple cubical cell splitting up 

 and dividing into many other cells, all being closely 

 united together by a cellulose membrane, and increasing 

 from one to two, four, eight, and sixteen, in regularly- 

 arranged series. Sarcinae are not easily killed that is, 

 they resist the action of strong acids, in this respect 

 resembling the silicious frustules of diatoms. Sarcina 

 veniricnli is believed to be nearly allied to, if noi 

 identical with, ferment fungus; it is doubtless the 

 product of a contaminated water supply. 



Another internal entophyta, which I am inclined to 

 believe belongs rather to the genus Oscillatorise than 

 to bacteria, is termed corkscrew-thread or spirilla. It 

 is an extremely fine, cylindrical, filamentous organism, 

 of rather sluggish habits, and of a very destructive 

 nature. The supposed relation of spirilla to epidemic 

 visitations of famine fever have been confirmed. The 

 disease was first observed in the eastern parts of Europe 

 and in India, where a certain recurrent form of fever is 

 indigenous amongst a badly-fed people, and in the 

 blood of those who have died corkscrew-like threads are 

 invariably found. Spirillum, or famine fever, appeared 

 at Berlin in 1872, and then it was that the attention of 

 the medical profession became more particularly directed 

 to it, and the exact relation between certain specific 

 organisms present in the blood, and the contagium of 

 this peculiar form of fever became fairly established. 

 During the same year famine fever appeared in Bres- 

 lau, and in more than a hundred cases spirilla were 

 seen to almost completely block up the blood-vessels. 

 In. some instances a single drop of blood, placed under 

 the microscope, was observed to literally swarm with 

 minute undulating spiral rods. In India, the specific 

 nature of the disease has been proved by the inocula- 

 tion of quadrumans with infected human blood. 



Splenic fever, cha-.-bon, or anthracoid fever, is another 



