384 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Parasitic Organisms of Dressings * — The dressings of wounds 

 sometimes acquire a blue or green colour. C. Gessard finds this to 

 be due to a small mobile parasitic organism which he was able to 

 cultivate in sterilized urine or a decoction of carrots. It is developed 

 in saliva, sweat, albuminous liquids, &c. The blue pigment it 

 secretes is the pyocyanine of Fordos. A current of sulphuretted 

 hydrogen turns it green and then yellow, and the organism has the 

 same action by reason of its avidity for oxygen. 



Parasitic Nature of Cholerat.— Max v. Pettenkofer argues in 

 favour of the origin of cholera from parasitic organisms. These 

 organisms he believes to be propagated by intercourse with places in 

 which the disease is epidemic or endemic ; but that, when removed to 

 another place, without losing their poisonous properties, they propagate 

 themselves only when they find at this place a substratum which serves 

 as their nutrient or as host, and which comes into contact with man 

 either directly or in the soil of their dwellings. Even where cholera 

 breaks out apparently without any connection with the soil, as in 

 ships, he believes the germ comes into contact with the substratum 

 brought from the land. The only efiectual remedy for cholera he 

 believes to be the purifying of the soil by drainage, &c., the 

 ventilation of dwellings, cutting oflf of infected water, and similar 



Parasitism of Tnberculosis.J — H. Toussaint collected in a care- 

 fully cleansed vessel the blood from a cow affected with tuberculosis, 

 allowed it to coagulate, and transferred the serum which separated 

 after coagulation into some Pasteur's tubes filled with infusion of 

 the flesh of cats, swine, and rabbits, and placed them in a warm 

 chamber. After a few days there were formed in these fluids very 

 small simple granules, united into pairs or in masses. From these 

 was made a second culture with which kittens were infected, but 

 they died before tuberculosis manifested itself. Five months after- 

 wards he inoculated two older cats from the remaining serum, which 

 still showed the globular granules. These died 47 days after inocula- 

 tion ; one exhibited a moderately conspicuous local lesion, and a 

 considerably swollen axillary gland, but no tubercles in the lungs ; 

 the other, similar lesions, as well as of the lymphatic glands, and a 

 number of minute tubercles scattered through both sides of the 

 lungs. A second culture from the blood of a cow afiected with 

 tuberculosis must be regarded as having failed, since the greatest 

 variety of microbia made their ajjijearance. On the 1st of March he 

 killed a pig which had been fed with the lungs of a tuberculose cow, 

 containing a great number of tubercles, and in which all the 

 lymphatic glands were cheesy. Blood and the pulp from the 

 lymphatic glands were mixed with a slightly alkaline infusion of 



* Comptes Eenrlus, xciv. (1882) pp. 536-8. 



t Zur Aetiologie der InfectioDBkrankheiten, 1881, pp. 333-52. See Bot. 

 Centralbl., ix. (1882) p. 25. 



j Comptes Rendus, xciii. (1881) pp. 350-3, 



