SYSTEMATIC AND DESCRIPTIVE. 255 



inoculation experiments maintain that choleraic 

 symptoms were produced without any trace of 

 peritonitis or putrid infection, and that the comma- 

 bacilli of Koch were again found in the intestinal 

 contents, and fresh cultivations established. 



On the other hand, these results have been dis- 

 puted, the fatal effects of the inoculation attributed 

 to septicsemic poisoning, and the proliferation of 

 the bacilli considered to be dependent upon an 

 abnormal condition of the intestines induced by the 

 injection of tincture of opium. * It is, however, very 

 probable that these organisms, like several others 

 which have been isolated from intestinal discharges, 

 are truly pathogenic in the lower animals. The 

 comma-bacilli were found in the superficial necrosed 

 layer of the intestine, in the mucous flakes and 

 liquid contents of the intestinal canal of cases of 

 Asiatic cholera f (Figs. 87, 88, 89). It is stated that 

 they were also detected in a tank which contained 

 the water supply to a neighbourhood where cholera 



* Klein, Brit. Med. Journal, and Micro-organism and Disease. 

 1885. Lankester, Nature, xxxi.; Nineteenth Century. July, 1885. 

 Klein and Gibbes, "An Inquiry into the Etiology of Asiatic 

 Cholera." Bluebook, 1885. 



t At a meeting of the Physiological Society, May I5th, 1886, at 

 Cambridge, a preliminary communication was made upon the investi- 

 gations in Spain referred to in the first edition of this work. The 

 observations made by Roy, Brown, and Sherrington rather tend, in 

 the opinion of the author, to confirm Koch's views. Comma-bacilli 

 were found to be present, in some cases, in enormous numbers, and 

 the frequency of their occurrence led these observers to believe that 

 they must bear some relation to the disease. At the same time, 

 as they failed to find them in all cases, they regarded the existence 

 of a causal relation as not proven. They failed to find the Naples 

 bacterium or the small straight bacillus noted by Klein ; but they 



