708 PHYSIOLOGY IN RELATION TO 



mucus, which is in some cases flaked off from the inner walls of the 

 bladder. Now, neither of these views suggests a vera causa for the 

 effect for which they profess to account. Blood coagulates when in 

 contact with non-vitalised matter, and blood-corpuscles arrange 

 themselves in rouleaux under similar circumstances. But Mr. 

 Lister, who has shown us so much which bears on this matter, has 

 shown us also, and that in the last number but two (July 18, 1868) 

 of our Journal, that urine will remain for an indefinite period 

 undecomposed in a properly constructed, which happens to mean 

 a properly contorted, receptacle, even though that receptacle be as 

 little vitalised as glass. And Niemeyer has shown, what I dare 

 say many who are now honouring me with their presence have 

 observed, but, I think, not recorded, that urine often retains its 

 acidity through protracted cases of vesical catarrh, and in spite of 

 cumuli of clouds of ' fermentative ' mucus ; which are, therefore, as 

 little of verae causae as is ' catalysis ' itself. But the presence of 

 vibrios in the urine, and that before it leaves the bladder, is a vera 

 causa, i.e. a present condition, aud therefore possibly a cause, or 

 connected with the cause, of the phaenomena to be investigated 

 (see Beale, 'On the Urine,' p. 196); and the idea that the alka- 

 lescence in question depended upon them, an idea which I had not 

 the time to find an opportunity of verifying for myself, I find has 

 been verified for the benefit of others by Niemeyer, with the assist- 

 ance of Traube and Teuffel. ' In the course of last year,' saj^s 

 Niemeyer (I.e. ii. 66, 1868), 'I arrived, partly by means of an 

 observation of Traube's, partly by means of experiments and obser- 

 vations of my own, which have been published by Teuffel in the 

 " Berlin Klinische Wochenschrift," at the conviction that it was not 

 the vesical mucus, but lower organisms, which probably get into 

 the bladder by means of the introduction of badly cleaned catheters, 

 and excite there the alkaline fermentation of the urine.' Now, 

 whether the vibrios find their way into the bladder exclusively on 

 dirty catheters or not, I apprehend that the addition of some 

 carbolic acid to the oil used for lubricating these instruments, 

 whether they be guilty or not of what is here laid to their charge, 

 will be a piece of practice calculated to prevent the alkalescence 

 which the vibrios cause by preventing these vibrios themselves 

 from entering on their evil activity. Mr. Lister's paper, just 

 alluded to, will show that this is an experiment which may very 



