ANTAGONISM AMONG MICKO -ORGANISMS. 69 



sipelas. Therapeutic inoculations with cultures of the streptococ- 

 cus erysipelatosus in animals suffering from anthrax were not as 

 successful. In later experiments made in the same direction in 

 conjunction with Mattei, it was ascertained that when the cocci of 

 erysipelas were injected both into the circulation and the subcuta- 

 neous tissues of rabbits twenty-four hours before the infection with 

 anthrax, the bacilli, even when administered in large quantities, 

 were destroyed in from twelve to seventeen hours, and could no 

 longer be found either at the seat of infection or in the blood and 

 internal organs, whether by microscopical examination, or by cul- 

 tivation experiments. 



Neumann (" Ueber den Einfluss des Erysipelas auf den Yerlauf 

 der coustitutionellen Syphilis/ 7 Allg. Wiener med. Zeitung, 1888, 

 No. 4) communicates two observations of his own in which erysipe- 

 las exerted a decided beneficial effect on syphilis. 



The first patient was a woman, fifty-six years old, who Avithin 

 two and a half mouths passed through three attacks of facial ery- 

 sipelas, during which the cutaneous gummata in that part of the 

 face affected with erysipelas disappeared completely. The second 

 case was a man, twenty-six years old, who contracted a hard chan- 

 cre six weeks before he was attacked by facial erysipelas. During 

 the acute attack the primary sore improved and the secondary 

 symptoms did not appear until seventy-three days after the infec- 

 tion, and then in only a mild form, so that the erysipelas had the 

 effect of postponing the secondary symptoms. 



The experimental work of Watson Cheyne (London Medical 

 Record, 1887) on the antagonistic action of the streptococcus 

 erysipelatosus upon the bacillus of anthrax is of the greatest prac- 

 tical and scientific importance. He experimented on rabbits ; (a) 

 by inoculating them with the microbes of erysipelas, and two to 

 fourteen days later with anthrax ; (6) by simultaneous intravenous, 

 or subcutaneous inoculation of both ; (c) by inoculating the virus 

 of erysipelas, after anthrax had been artificially produced. Of the 

 first series of fifteen animals, seven recovered, while all the control 

 animals died. Of the second series of sixteen animals, only two 

 recovered. In these sets of experiments, by injection of a half 

 million of anthrax bacilli, all the control animals died, whilst all 

 those that received intravenous injection of a pure culture of the 

 microbes of erysipelas, though they were never ill, recovered. 



Schwimmer ("Ueber den Heilwerth des Erysipels bei verschie- 

 denen Krankheitsformen," Wiener med. Presse, 1888, Nos. 14, 15, 

 16) has studied with special care the antagonistic properties of the 

 streptococcus of erysipelas in different infectious diseases. In 

 syphilis, the lesions occurring in the erysipelatous area healed more 

 promptly. In a case of obstinate orchitis and epididymitis, on both 



