1887. ] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. © ( 
_ Reply to arguments against Cholera Bacillus. By G. W. Lewis.* 
Koch, in 1884, expressed the belief that comma bacillus is etiologically 
related to Asiatic cholera; that the organisms gain entrance through the 
mouth ; that they depend for passage on a diseased condition of the stomach ; 
that the real seat of the disease is the lower part of the ileum, including Peyer’s 
glands ; and that inoculation has had but negative results. He pointed out 
the remarkable relation between the history of the disease and the life-history 
of the organism—short development and rapid decline—statements based on 
300 autopsies in France, Egypt, and India. 
Much opposition to his idea arose. Some of it was weak, e. @., spontaneous 
origin of the disease ; also that the comma is only a transition stage to the 
true but unknown bacillus form, which is etiologically related. There is no 
evidence that their life-history shows such a harmless comma stage and hurt- 
ful later stage, though some under culture do lose pathogenic properties. It 
is also true that other intestinal bacteria are only ;!, as frequent as comma form. 
One theory assumes that the comma is scavenger, not disease agent. 
The objection to this is their remarkably constant presence and their flourish- 
ing so well in other media than the cholera surroundings. If scavengers, they 
should not flourish so well when their occupation is taken from them yet 
they live well and without change up to 2oth culture. 
Klein suggests that cholera favors growth by furnishing nutrient soil for the 
bacteria, and on this hypothesis accounts for their presence. If this is so, we 
must start with them in the healthy body. But here they have never been 
found. If it were possible to cause cholera by inoculation with the comma 
bacillus, its etiological relation would be unquestionable. But its action upon 
the digestive process is 7zz/ so far as regards the healthy digestive system. This 
seems a strong barrier to the acceptance of Koch’s view, and would be insur- 
mountable in case lower animals were ever affected by this disease. But the 
unanimous evidence is that they areexempt. It seemed from the experiments 
that in healthy animals, even including man, the bacillus cannot survive a 
passage into the digestive tract. Klein proved this upon his own system. 
Experiments show that Mondays and Tuesdays are the most fatal days ; that 
is, days which are preceded by excess in eating or drinking. In 1884 the 
writer, under Koch’s direction, experimented on rabbits and guinea-pigs. He 
found that feeding them on pure culture produced no deleterious effects, but 
when bacilli were introduced directly into the duodenum the guinea-pigs, or 
rabbits, exhibited some six hours later symptoms of cholera infection. Upon 
examination after death, large numbers of the bacilli were found in the Peyer’s 
glands, and the glands were large and inflamed. Experiments on mice yielded 
only negative results. 
If we accept the doctrine that the disease is caused by a specific germ, we 
cannot accept the notion of the spontaneous origin of cholera any more than 
we could the spontaneous origin of the organism itself. It must obey the 
laws of living things, and cannot spring haphazard from other things or nothing. 
Apochromatic eye-pieces and compensating eye-pieces— (covztznued ) . 
Compensating eye-pieces.—These new eye-pieces have been designed for 
the purpose of compensating certain errors in the image formed by the objec- 
tive outside the axis, which cannot be corrected in the objective itself. They 
are especially arranged for use with the apochromatic objectives, and mate- 
rially improve their performance by giving a uniformly colorless image. 
The eye-pieces may also be effectively used with relatively wide-angled 
objectives of the old form, but when used with the ordinary medium and low 
* Buffalo Med. Jour., Oct., 86, p. 137. 
