PA"RT I.] Rapid '' Post-moriern" Developiiient of Organisms. i6i 



testine. — This was almost entirely composed of a mass of bacteroid staves of all sizes ; 

 some undivided, others segmented, and all motionless. 



Case II. — A healthy dog was killed, as in the former case, and set aside for 

 forty-eight hours, from the morning of the 20th to that of the 22nd of December, 

 1873. Specimens of blood from the heart, of fluid from the mesenteric glands, and 

 of the surface of the mucous membrane of the small intestines, were then procured 

 and examined with the following results : — 



1. Blood. — The red corpuscles were well preserved. The white corpuscles were 

 distended into hyaline spheres, with their contained granules aggregated into one or 

 more distinct masses. Throughout the serum there were numerous free particles in 

 active mechanical movement, and a sprinkling of large, elongated bacteria and vibri- 

 ones divided into two or more segments, and in some cases showing characteristic 

 movements. 



2. Fluid from the interior of the mesenteric glands. — This was crowded with 

 molecular matter and oily granules, and contained an abundance of long, active 

 vibriones, swimming to and fro with an undulating flexion, dependent on bending 

 both at their component joints and in the course of the individual segments. 



3. Mucous membrane of the small intestines. — Scrapings from this were full 

 of flakes formed of epithelium, stained yellow by the colouring matter of the bile. 

 Between these flakes there was a thick felted mass composed of large bacteria, and 

 of elongated, jointed vibrionic bodies like those in the contents of the glands, and 

 showing the same undulating movement as the latter, whenever they had room and 

 freedom to do so. 



In other cases, a similar development of vibriones was found to have occurred 

 beneath layers of exudation or in the deeper strata of the epithelial coat of the 

 intestine, and the appearances were such as might readily have been supposed to indicate 

 the existence of severe lesions dependent on parasitic invasion of the tissues by vegetable 

 organisms, had they not been found to occur in healthy subjects as well, and to be 

 dependent on jjost-mortem changes and developments. 



Even those who believe in the general freedom of the healthy tissues and fluids 

 from the elements of vegetable organisms, allow that the intestinal mucous membrane 

 does not participate in this freedom, and it would hardly have been necessary to 

 enter upon the question of the phenomena dependent on the rapid jjost-m.m^tem develop- 

 ment of such organisms there, had it not been for the prominence that has been 

 given to phenomena, which are, at all events, very similar to these, occurring in the 

 so-called '^mycosis intestinalis."* That such developments take place post-mortem in 



* In regard to this, see " The London Medical Record, 1874," containing an abstract from the " Berliner 

 Klinische Wochenschrift," of Frankel and Orth, on two cases of Malignant Pustule in the adult. The points of 

 chief interest, from the present point of view, regarding these cases, are : (l-«^), that in one case the jJOftt-morfrni 

 examination did not take place until the second day after death ; and (2)id), that the blootl of the second case 

 examined a few hours before death, and when the patient was collapsed ami cyanotic, afforded only negative 

 results, although examined under high powers and with immersion lenses ; while on pont-morffm examination an 

 abundance of bacteria were discovered in it, 



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