ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 119 



presence of air and the nitric ferment in soils, iodides are converted 

 into iodates. He now finds that alkaline bromides are converted into 

 bromatcs under the same conditions, but similar experiments with 

 chlorides gave no definite results. In presence of the nitric ferment, 

 but out of contact with air, alkaline iodates, bromates, and chlorates 

 are completely and somewhat rapidly reduced to iodides, bromides, 

 and chlorides respectively. 



Etiology of Asiatic Cholera.* — The report of Drs. E. Klein and 

 H. Gibbes, together with the transactions of a committee convened to 

 consider it, on which there were, among others, Sir W. Jenner, Sir 

 W. Gull, Sir J. Fayrer, Prof. Burdon-Sanderson, Dr. Aitken, and 

 Dr. Timothy Lewis, has been published by the India Office. 



Drs. Klein and Gibbes traverse directly several of Dr. Koch's 

 statements ; for example, the German observer stated that the number 

 of comma-shaped organisms in the intestinal tissues and contents is 

 in proportion to the acuteness of the attack, and that these organisms 

 generate within the body a ferment by which the system is poisoned ; 

 the delegates of the India Office find, on the other hand, that the 

 number of comma-bacilli in the stools of choleraic patients varies 

 very greatly ; they did not find that Peyer's patches or the solitary 

 glands of the ileum were enlarged, while they explain the occasional 

 abundance of the bacilli by the supposition that they here find the 

 most suitable conditions for growth. Fine sections of the mucous 

 membrane stained in various anilin dyes revealed the total absence of 

 comma-bacilli from the mucous membrane itself, from the tissue of the 

 villi, and the adjoining tissues. Blood of choleraic patients obtained 

 according to the usual approved method from patients in various 

 stages of the disease was not in one instance found to contain any 

 kind of bacterium, and similar results were obtained by cultivation 

 experiments. 



W ith regard to Dr. Koch's proposition that comma-bacilli are not 

 found under any conditions other than cholera, it is remarked that 

 this bacillus, or at any rate one that appears to be morphologically 

 identical with it, occurs also in the stools of diarrhoea, and has been 

 met with in cases of dysentery, enteric catarrh, chronic phthisis, and 

 chronic peritonitis. With regard to the causal connection between 

 the comma-shaped organisms in cholera, a belief which Dr. Koch 

 based on the examination of a certain village tank, Drs. Klein and 

 Gibbes write that a sample of the water from the same tank was 

 examined by them, and was found to contain undoubted comma- 

 bacilli ; nevertheless, there was no case of cholera among the 200 

 families that used the tank. " We have in this instance an experi- 

 ment performed by nature on a scale large enough to serve as an 

 absolute and exact one. The water had been contaminated with 

 choleraic evacuations, and of course with the comma-bacilli, and it 

 was used extensively by many human beings for several weeks." It 

 is clear, then, that this water did not contain the cholera virus, and 

 that the latter has nothing to do with the comma-bacilli. 



* Folio, Loudon, 1885, 44 and 30 pp. 



