930 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Microbe of Typhoid' Fever of Man.* — M. Tagon commenced 

 his ex2:>eriments on the microbe of typhoid fever by injecting the 

 blood from a patient dead of typhoid under the skin of rabbits, 

 pigeons, and other animals ; the malady was never transmitted. 

 Drinking of the blood did not have mortal effects, nor did other direct 

 means of poisoning have any result. It was different, however, when 

 the microbes were cultivated in various liquids. At the end of 

 twenty-four to forty-eight hours the typhoid microbe rendered turbid 

 the cultivation fluid; if this was injected under the skin of the 

 rabbit, white rat, or pigeon it had no effect ; the dog or cat might be 

 attacked by a mortal disease, but the guinea-pig died within a period 

 varying between twenty minutes and forty to forty-five hours ; in the 

 last-named animal the characteristic lesions were always to be 

 detected. The blood of a guinea-pig so killed w&s not mortal to 

 other guinea-pigs, nor to rabbits, eats, or pigeons ; but if a drop is 

 cultivated it is soon very virulent towards other guinea-pigs, and 

 dangerous for dogs or cats, but indifferent to the rabbit or pigeon. 

 After several successive passages in cultivation and in the body of a 

 guinea-pig, the microbe becomes certainly mortal to cats a month old. 

 The blood of such a cat is very virulent for rabbits only, but the 

 blood of a poisoned rabbit will not kill other rabbits until, at any 

 rate, it has been cultivated. 



The typhoid microbe is then " un petit etre a transmission," just 

 like certain parasites w^hich pass part of their existence in one and 

 the rest in another animal. It differs from the microbe of anthrax, 

 or chicken-cholera, or the septic vibrios which are reproduced without 

 transition in one organism; it has a more complicated life-history, 

 for two appropriate media are necessary to its existence. 



Under the Microscope, with a magnifying power of 1000 diameters, 

 it has the form of small granulations and of short and very mobile 

 rods, which, were it not for their small size, would have a consider- 

 able resemblance to the septic vibrio ; some of the granulations have 

 very fine prolongations, which are extremely mobile ; in other cases 

 there are rounded spores and short rods, which may be seen to 

 segment, and to produce granulations in their interior and at their 

 extremities. 



Bacillus of Cholera and its Culture.f — An outbreak of cholera 

 last July at Bonn gave Prof. Finkler and Dr. Prior an opportunity of 

 applying Koch's method to the study of the comma-shaped bacillus 

 which showed a remarkable resemblance to that of Asiatic cholera 

 cultivated by Koch. It was found associated with large masses of the 

 spiral-shaped organism, but with no other germ of specific appearance. 

 These forms could not be detected in preparations of normal or any 

 other pathological excreta under the same method of treatment. But 

 after several failures a comma bacillus was obtained, which in its 

 nourishment, period of evolution, and temperature, behaved exactly like 



* Comptes Rendus, scix. (1884) pp. 331-4. 



t Nature, xxx. (1884) p. 626. Report of the Magdeburg Meeting of the 

 Association of German Naturalists and Physicians. 



