TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 987 
and vaccinia, and, as an outcome of this, on the questionof the purification and 
preservation of vaccine lymph. i 
Vaccine lymph as ordinarily obtained and stored is apt to contain, in addition 
to the specific veins, certain microbes, of which some, when inoculated in the act 
of vaccination, are liable to be productive of dangerous complications. It was 
shown, however, in the Transactions of the Congress of Hygiene for 1891, that this 
difficulty could be avoided by the admixture with the lymph material of an equal 
quantity of a 50 per cent. solution of pure glycerine in water, prior to storage in 
capillary tubes. When this process is adopted, and the tubes kept protected from 
the light for a period of from two to six weeks, it is found, after this lapse of time, 
that gelatine plates made from such tubes remain absolutely sterile. The lymph, 
however, is still perfectly active as vaccine, the specific virus being able to with- 
stand the action of the glycerine. 
In view of the publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccina- 
tion, it appeared to be desirable to investigate more accurately the action of glyce- 
rine on various micro-organisms of a pathogenic or non-pathogenic nature respec- 
tively. 
‘Method.—This has been done by the addition of known quantities of glycerine 
to tubes of beef-peptone broth, which are subsequently inoculated with equal 
quantities of pure cultivations, and incubated at blood-heat and at the room tem- 
perature respectively. Control inoculations in ordinary beef broth have also 
invariably been employed. Subsequently an inoculation is made from the broth- 
tubes on to solid media, at varying intervals of time, in order to see whether the 
particular microbe is still capable of growth, or not. In all, some hundreds of 
inoculations have been made thus far, and the paper includes a table in which are 
given the maximum limits of substance attained in the different series, Practi- 
éally, the results of each similar series were found to agree very closely. 
The micro-organisms employed for the inoculations comprised Staphylococcus 
pyogenes aureus, S. pyogenes albus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Bacillus pyocyaneus, B. 
subtilis, B. coli communis, B. diphtheria and B. tuberculosis, Small-pox and vac- 
cine material in the form of ‘crusts’ and lymph was also employed. 
Results.—1. No visible development of the micro-organisms employed takes 
place in the presence of more than 30 per cent. of glycerine. 
2. All the micro-organisms experimented with are killed out in less than a 
month in the presence of from 30 per cent. to 40 per cent. glycerine, with the ex- 
ception of B. coli communis and B, subtilis, when kept in the cold. 
3. B. coli communis, unlike B. typhosus, resists the action of 50 per cent. 
elycerine, in the cold, for a considerable period, a fact which is likely to prove a 
valuable addition to our present methods of differentiating these microbes from one 
another. 
4, Small-pox and vaccine material, whether as ‘crusts’ or lymph, are sterilised 
completely, so far as extraneous microbes are concerned, in a week by the presence 
of glycerine to the extent of 40 per cent. in the broth-tubes. 
6. Some Points in the Mechanism of Reaction to Peritoneal ? Infections. 
By Hersert E. Duruan, Gull Research Student, Bacteriological 
Laboratory, Guy’s Hospital. 
Shortly after intra-peritoneal injections of various substances (guinea-pigs), 
there is a remarkable disappearance of the wandering cells normally present in the 
peritoneal fluid. ‘I'hree kinds of wander cells, or leucocytes, are found in normal 
peritoneal fluid—viz., hyaline cells, coarsely granular oxyphil, or ‘megoxyphil’ 
cells as it is proposed to call them, and lymphocytes. The above disappearance 
affects the hyaline and megoxyphil cells; the lymphocytes remain. 
For the period of the paucity of cells in the fluid, the term leucopenia or 
leucopenic stage, proposed by Léwit, may be pace 
The onset of leucopenia is described to be instantaneous by Kanthack, and 
Hardy, and by Issaeff. The author's observations in more than 200 instances 
282 
