1889.] of the Injection of Ferments. 19 



ciated. At the present time it appears to be strong and fat, and 

 only a trace of the swellings can be seen. 



Experiment 5. Three rabbits, Nos. 40, 41 and 42, were in- 

 oculated with virulent anthrax spores. No. 42 served as control 

 and died within 60 hours. Its spleen contained very few bacilli 

 which were never arranged in chains of more than six joints. 

 No. 40 received five cc. of one per cent, pepsin solution the day 

 after inoculation with anthrax. It died after about 60 hours. 

 The bacilli in the spleen were mostly in chains of 10 to 20 joints. 

 Generally they were arranged in clusters which often surrounded 

 a phagocyte. A few phagocytes containing bacilli were seen. 



No. 41 weighed a little over two kilos. It had three cc. of 

 the pepsin solution the day after inoculation, another three cc. 

 were injected after a few hours, and again six cc. on the following 

 day. It died 71 hours after its anthrax inoculation. The spleen 

 was full of bacilli arranged in rows so long as to be difficult to 

 count, reminding one of a gelatine culture. Chains of over 30 

 segments w r ere noted. 



The above experiments appear to be interesting from several 

 points of view, though it must be confessed that they raise more 

 questions than they settle. 



In the first place, so far as I know, this is the first time that a 

 substance prepared independently of the pathogenic microbe, and 

 administered after its advent, has been found to exert an influence 

 on the development of the microbe within the body of the animal 

 and so on the course of the disease. Since the ferments that I 

 experimented with have no special known relation to the anthrax 

 bacillus it is to be expected that the same ferments will exert an 

 analogous influence on the course of other diseases, which are 

 similarly produced by pathogenic micro-organisms. Further I 

 have worked with virulent anthrax, a virus which kills 100 per 

 cent, of the rabbits inoculated with it. That is to say, the rabbit 

 shews practically no power of resisting the onset of the malady. 

 May it not be expected that these ferments will shew a still 

 greater power of antagonising the microbe in those diseases and 

 with those animals in which the mortality is only 10 or 20 per 

 cent. ? 



Secondly, the above results are interesting from the point of 

 view of the phagocyte theory. The upholders of this theory assert 

 that natural or acquired immunity against a disease is due to the 

 greater activity of phagocytes. But by the injection of ferments 

 I have in some cases at any rate endowed the animal with an 

 increased power of resisting anthrax virus. The ferments were 

 injected into the blood plasma, and in this liquid the bacilli lived 

 and were apparently affected independently of any increased 

 phagocyte activity. One of these ferments, the pepsin, is at any 



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