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absent in 64, or 25 per cent of them. In some of our cases, with a 

 septico-pyemic dissemination of the virus, we have found an extensive 

 infection of the kidneys with plague bacilli; and the conclusion is justified 

 that the bacilli must be abimdant in the urine in such cases. In fact 

 in articles on plague one frequently finds the statement that the urine 

 generally contains bacilli; yet exact observations on this point have thus 

 far been very meager. 



The German commission reports that it found plague bacilli in the 

 urine in only two cases. The urine both from plague patients and from 

 post-mortem cases usually was foimd free from these organism. The 

 Austrian commission frequently found numerous plague bacilli in the 

 kidneys, but encountered them in only five out of seventeen different spec- 

 imens of urine obtained post-mortem from plague cases. The Indian com- 

 mission examined sixty specimens of urine by cultural methods and found 

 the plague bacilli three times. Five other specimens were examined by 

 inoculation into guinea pigs; in one case only did an animal develop 

 plague. 



These results obtained from the bacteriologic examination of 

 urine in plague are well in accord with our own histologic observa- 

 tions. The bacilli were as a rule found in the renal tissue only in 

 moderate numbers and in such situations that their appearance 

 in the urine was not at all likely. Onl_y when found in the capsular 

 space of the glomeruli may we safely suppose them to have been 

 present in the urine also. However, since one can not know inter 

 vitam whether an infection of the kidneys exists or not, it is well 

 always to treat the urine in plague as a possible source of infection. 

 The same rule applies to feces, which likewise, as the histologic 

 study of the stomach and intestines teaches, may sometimes contain 

 plague bacilli. 



However we may here insert that the presence of plague bacilli 

 in the feces must be still more exceptional than their appearance in 

 urine. 



The German commission was never able to demonstrate them in the feces 

 either by culture or by animal inoculation. The Indian commission, after 

 giving a detailed account of its work on the attempted detection of 

 plague bacilli in the feces, says: "The results of the above series of 

 examinations may be summarized in the statement that the plague 

 bacillus as yet has not in any case been isolated from human feces. Such 

 a negative result is, however, of very little account in view of the fact 

 that it is, as we have seen, a matter of extreme difficulty to isolate by 

 cultural methods the plague bacillus from a material such as feces, in 

 which the bacillus coli and an infinity of other bacteria are to be foimd." 



The pelves of the kidne3^s, in intensely hemorrhagic cases, occa- 

 sionally contain a considerable amount of blood. In such cases the 



