i;8 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE. [CHAP. 



including comma-bacilli, are capable of growing after death, 

 and even before, into the clefts and spaces of the intestinal 

 wall from the internal cavity. 



The mucus-flakes of the small intestine, taken from a 

 typical rapidly fatal case immediately after death, contain 

 besides detached epithelial-cells, numbers of lymph cor- 

 puscles, some perfect, others swollen up and disintegrating. 



FlGS. 100 AND 101. 



Pure cultivation of choleraic comma-bacilli in gelatine-peptone-broth. The two tubes 

 had been inoculated at the same time with the same comma-bacilli, and were 

 kept under precisely the same conditions. In both the surface of growth is 

 marked by a depression. At the bottom of the growth is a whitish precipitate of 

 masses of comma-bacilli. The rest of the channel is filled with almost clear 

 liquefied gelatine. 



Soon after death all disintegrate. These corpuscles contain, 

 in varying numbers within their protoplasm, straight minute 

 bacilli much smaller than the comma-bacilli, being only 

 half or a fourth their length, and more or less pointed. 



But these bacilli are constantly found also free ; singly, in 

 chains, and in smaller or larger groups. 



