76 INFLAMMATION. 



were as follows : Four rabbits died of fibrinous suppurative perito- 

 nitis from the injection with the first portion. Four rabbits injected 

 with the filtered feces, recovered, as did one rabbit inoculated with 

 the sterilized portion. At the autopsy, particles of the intestinal 

 contents were found in the peritoneal cavity covered with fibrin, 

 and microscopically peculiar, short bacilli. This microbe he called 

 bacillus peritonitidus ex-intestinalis cuniculi, and describes the cul- 

 tures upon agar-agar plates as shining, grayish-white, oil paint-like 

 colonies. It does not liquefy gelatin. The bacillus is non- motile. 

 With cultures of this bacillus he made nine experiments on rabbits 

 and two on dogs. Each animal, which received an entire agar 

 culture, died of hemorrhagic peritonitis in from twenty to twenty- 

 four hours. Smaller quantities produced death from the same 

 cause in from twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Still smaller 

 doses produced a suppurative peritonitis, and death after a number 

 of days. Of the two dogs, each injected with an agar culture, one 

 died after twenty-four hours of incipient hemorrhagic peritonitis, 

 the other recovered after an illness of several days' duration. In 

 the fatal cases, the bacilli were found in different internal organs, 

 and could again be reproduced by inoculations with the infected 

 tissues upon nutrient media. He believes that this bacillus is the 

 essential cause of perforative peritonitis. He also asserts that the 

 fibriuous form of peritonitis is the least dangerous, as the layers of 

 fibrin tend to limit the ingress of microbes into the organism. 

 The fibrinous purulent variety is the next formidable form, while 

 in the most rapidly fatal cases of septic peritonitis the local lesion 

 is not characterized by any macroscopical tissue-changes. 



Alexander Frankel (Wiener Mm. Woehenschrif 1,1888,^0$. 30- 

 32) testifies to the harmlessness of pure cultures of microbes when 

 injected into the peritoneal cavity of rabbits. Fehleisen (Arddv 

 /. Idin. Chirurgie, B. xxxvi. p. 978) injected pus from abscesses 

 containing the staphylococcus pyogenes aureus in doses of from 4 

 to 8 c.cm. into the peritoneal cavity of rabbits without producing 

 peritonitis in every instance, or even as a rule, although in some 

 instances the animals died from injection of a much smaller quan- 

 tity. Fehleisen is of the opinion that the number of microbes in 

 the pus does not determine its virulence. 



Orth (" Experimentelles iiber Peritonitis," Berl. klin. Woohen- 

 schrift, October 28, 1889) agrees with Grawitz that when a pure 

 culture of pus-microbes is injected into a healthy peritoneal cavity 

 no suppuration is produced. But his experiments proved what is 

 of the greatest practical interest, that if the peritoneum is wounded 

 under antiseptic precautions peritonitis is invariably produced, if 

 somewhere else in the body suppuration existed at the same time. 

 If, for instance, an abscess in the subcutaneous tissue was produced, 



