CH. ix] OF TRANSMUTATION 133 



if bacilli of the Gaertner type were present in the original strain, 

 but in such scanty numbers as to escape detection, these few 

 bacilli might in the living tissues multiply with such rapidity 

 as to become ultimately the predominant organism. The pre- 

 cautions taken to secure the purity of the original culture 

 would presumably exclude such a source of error. 



(6) In the second place, bacilli of the later or Gaertner 

 type might conceivably have been present, before the inocu- 

 lations were made, in the bodies of the calves themselves. 

 This possibility appears at first sight to be excluded by the 

 fact that the serum of the calf before inoculation failed to 

 agglutinate the organism recovered afterwards, although the 

 serum after inoculation was able to do so. This observation 

 is not, however, final. 



Savage (1907-8) and other observers have recorded the 

 presence of B. Gaertner in the intestines of healthy young 

 calves. Its presence in the intestines of the calves inoculated 

 in these experiments was not definitely excluded. 



The repeated administration in the food of as much as 

 50 c.c. of a young broth culture of a pathogenic organism would 

 be likely to cause an inflammatory reaction in the bowel 

 and such inflammation might lead, not only to an enormous 

 increase in numbers on the part of any other pathogenic 

 organism present, but also to an exaltation in their virulence. 

 We have referred elsewhere (vide p. 80) to such a sequence in 

 the case of B. coli in the intestine during an attack of typhoid 

 fever and in inflammatory conditions resulting from improper 

 food. 



Such an increase both in numbers and in virulence on the 

 part of the organism we are discussing might well pave the 

 way for its invasion of the system as a whole and lead to its 

 appearance in the blood and internal organs, in a manner 

 analogous to the invasion of the body by saprophytic organ- 

 isms of heightened virulence in the cavity of an inflamed 

 uterus. At the same time the blood serum would acquire 

 agglutination properties which it did not possess when the 

 bacilli were few in number, of low virulence and restricted to 

 the lumen of the intestine. 



