THE BACTERIOPHAGE IN DISEASE 



221 



From this it appears that the intestinal bacteriophage is en- 

 dowed with virulence for the bacterium of barbone in all the 

 buffaloes which the disease had spared. 



In the course of different trips across Indo-China, I collected 

 forty-one specimens of feces from buffaloes, each specimen col- 

 lected in a different village in which no buffaloes had died of 

 barbone for at least two years. In only three of these specimens 

 could a bacteriophage active for the bacterium of barbone be 

 demonstrated, and in these cases it was weak (+) Nevertheless, 

 the intestinal bacteriophage was present in all; but although it 

 was active for one or another of the intestinal organisms, its viru- 

 lence was weak or lacking for the bacterium of barbone. 



We will see later, on the contrary, that in a contaminated area 

 at the time when the epizootic dies out, the intestinal bacterio- 

 phage of all of the buffaloes which escaped the disease is virulent 

 for the bacterium, the causative agent of the epizootic. We find 

 here, then, the same facts as in the previous disease studied; 



