44 Chapter III 



In recent years, however, several works have been published 

 the aim of which was to demonstrate the inaccuracy of this 

 apparently well-established thesis. Biedl and Kraus 1 in Vienna 

 took the initiative and announced in a detailed work that micro- 

 organisms can readily pass intact into the kidney and that this organ 

 in virtue of its physiological function eliminates them. The organisms 

 were said to leave the blood capillaries by the normal process of 

 diapedesis and were then eliminated with the urine. The liver in 

 a physiological condition, according to the researches of these 

 authors, is equally capable of allowing of the passage of micro- 

 organisms ; indeed it aids in discharging them from the system. On 

 the other hand, the pancreas and the salivary glands were incapable 

 of fulfilling this function. Von Klecki 2 obtained similar results. 

 He also holds that the kidney is the principal organ of elimination 

 for micro-organisms which have penetrated into a refractory organism. 



With these contradictions before him, Opitz 3 set himself to study 

 this question in Fliigge's laboratory at Breslau. Having critically 

 reviewed the technical methods of his predecessors and carried out 

 a series of new experiments, he declared categorically "that a 

 physiological excretion, by the kidneys, of the micro-organisms which 

 circulate in the blood, does not exist." For Opitz "the frequent 

 appearance of micro-organisms in the urine of animals into whose 

 blood, a short time previously, living bacteria have been injected, is 

 due to mechanical and chemical lesions of the vessel wall and of the 

 renal epithelia." 



This question might be looked upon as definitely settled in 

 favour of the first results obtained by Wyssokowitch were it not 

 that other voices had been raised in favour of a physiological 

 excretion of the micro-organisms by the renal channels. Pawlowsky 4 

 has recently published a 'long work on this subject in which he 

 attempts to demonstrate that certain micro-organisms^ even when 

 introduced into the subcutaneous tissue of animals, pass very rapidly 

 [48] (at the end of a quarter of an hour) into the uropoietic organs and 

 are eliminated with the urine. 



It was necessary to put an end to these controversies and Me tin 5 

 undertook a series of researches at the Pasteur Institute with the 



1 Ztschr.f. Hyg., Leipzig, 1897, Bd. xxvi, S. 353. 



2 Arch./, exper. Path., Leipzig, 1897, Bd. xxxix, S. 39. 



3 Ztschr.f. Hyg., Leipzig, 1898, Bd. xxix, S. 52$. 



4 Ztschr.f. Hyg., Leipzig, 1900, Bd. xxxin, S. 261. 



6 Ann. de VInst. Pasteur, Paris, 1900, t. Xiv, p. 415. 



