158 Researches Regarding Cholera: the Blood. [part 1. 



In the experiments in which healthy animals were employed, the procedure con- 

 sisted in administering chloroform until death ensued, and then laying the bodies aside 

 on a shelf without further interference. The results do not manifest that freedom of 

 the healthy tissues and fluids from the elements of bacteria which is maintained by 

 some of our most distinguished observers. That such a freedom should exist is 

 certainly not supported by the analogy of processes which may be observed in healthy 

 vegetable cells, and there is much reason to suspect that the observations on which 

 the doctrine has been founded have been too limited and too little varied to allow of 

 valid generalisations being drawn from them. This especially would appear to be the 

 case in regard to conditions of temperature, for it is manifestly impossible to lay 

 down a general law in regard to such developments, from observations carried on 

 under one set of conditions only. In order that future experiments on this point may 

 be compared with those now given, a column has been added to Table IX, showing 

 the mean temperatures of the days on which these experiments were conducted. 



Only one case remains demanding any special notice, namely, that of specimen 

 No. 3, Table VIII, in which active bacteria were present in abundance in the blood 

 immediately after death. The animal from which the specimen was obtained was in a 

 state of extreme depression, and evidently dying when chloroform was administered 

 to it, and the chief point of interest lies in the fact that the morbid condition had in 

 this instance not been induced by the introduction of any organic fluid, or of any 

 fluid which might be supposed to contain bacteria or their germs, but was due to the 

 intense and destructive inflammation resulting from the injection of liquor ammonite 

 into the peritoneal cavity. 



This case is a parallel of those described by Dr. Burdon Sanderson in his re- 

 searches into infective inflammation, in which inflammatory fluids of a highly infective 

 nature, — a nature which is, according to that experimenter, characterized by the presence 

 of bacteria in the effused fluids, — resulted from the introduction of pure chemical 

 media destructive of bacterial organisms, or which had been previously subjected to 

 boiling; — cases in which, whatever part the organisms in the fluid play in regard to 

 its infectious nature, there could be no doubt as to the manufacture of that fluid 

 with all its infectious properties within the living organism by a process of self- 

 infection. 



In the former report on experiments on animals, the occurrence of peculiar 

 elongated vibriones in the mesenteric glands, in cases in which death had resulted on 

 injection of choleraic fluids int^ the circulation, was recorded, and our attention was 

 again attracted to the subject by observing similar organisms in several of the specimens 

 of blood obtained from healthy animals at intervals after death. Kenewed examinations 

 of the gland fluid and of the mucous membrane of the small intestines under similar 

 circumstances were accordingly undertaken. 



The table given on next page shows the results of the examinations of the 

 contents of the mesenteric glands : — 



