458 Transactions of the Society. 



hours, by ingeniously contrived experiments, organisms in the blood 

 drawn from intermittent fever patients which he could not find in 

 the fresh blood. It is questionable whether they were the same as 

 the Bacillus malarise. 



Dr. Marchiafava contends for the correctness of the statements 

 of Klebs and Tomassi-Crudelli, for he finds the blood of all parts 

 of the body, in those stricken with malarial fever, to contain in the 

 initiative or cold stage both barren and spore-bearing rods, and in 

 the hot or fever stage, only free spores. 



The cyclical course of various infectious diseases is attributed 

 by Dr. Wernich and Professor Salkowski, from their careful experi- 

 ments, to the destruction of the micro-organisms in the living 

 body by their own products, i. e. they are destroyed by their own 

 excreta. 



What the term of life may be for the spores of these lowly 

 forms awaits inquiry. The germs of Bacillus anthracis are said by 

 M. Pasteur to have survived a period of twelve years, but how 

 much longer, lies in the investigations of the future. 



The medical digression has been purposely made to try and 

 engage some of the waste microscopical energy of the members of 

 this Society by showing that complex phenomena attributed to 

 the action of such micro-organisms yet wait for intelligible and 

 satisfactory answers. There is one hint I would throw out to 

 those who need the stimulus of patient work, viz. to follow up 

 the researches of M. Chappuis, by watching the effect of ozone 

 upon the life of the Schizophytes. Such an inquiry may lend 

 light to the obscurity that now veils some of the depressing 

 catarrhal epidemics, such as influenza, &c. 



Although much has already been accomplished, much has to 

 be repeated. As yet we only touch the edge of this vast field 

 for research. In it stands a complex problem for those to solve 

 who have the time and patience to compete for even a fractional 

 part. Fortunately encouragement comes from the important ex- 

 periments now made in other countries, in the form of "pre- 

 ventive inoculation," from which, already, highly beneficial results 

 have been achieved, conservative both to life and to the pocket. 

 May we not apply to ourselves what has been so ably said by 

 Dr. Burdon Sanderson in his recent Lectures upon Inflammation ? 

 " We are all of us, old and young, too apt to forget how slow and 

 gradual is the process by which we come to a right understanding 

 of objective facts. Let us be prepared to give equal credit to the 

 past and the present, accepting what is new without losing sight 

 of, much less rejecting, what is old." 



[Since the foregoing was written, that indefatigable observer 

 Dr. Koch has discovered another of the Bacteria which he, followed 

 by Dr. Baumgarten, considers as the cause of tuberculosis — a disease 



