780 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



indicate that it is a form of septicaBmia. Immediately after the 

 injection there is a rise of temperature, which in a few hours may- 

 reach 2° to 3^ C. ; the temperature subsequently falls, and shortly 

 before death is often several degrees below the normal. There is loss 

 of appetite and marked debility after twenty-four hours, and the 

 animal commonly dies during the second night or early in the 

 morning of the second day after the injection. Death results still 

 more quickly when the blood from a rabbit recently dead is injected. 

 Not infrequently convulsions immediately precede death. 



The results generally correspond with those reported by Pasteur. 



The phenomena detailed result, in the view of the author, from 

 the presence of a living organism in the saliva — a micrococcus — 

 which multiplies abundantly in the subcutaneous connective tissue, 

 and also in the blood shortly before or after death ; for — 



a. The poison is particulate. 



6. The virulence is destroyed by boiling. 



c. The saliva loses its virulence when kept for twenty-four hours 

 in a culture chamber, at a temperature of 37° C. 



d. The addition of one part of a 10 per cent, solution of carbolic 

 acid to two parts of saliva destroys its virulence. 



e. The effused serum from the subcutaneous connective tissue of 

 a rabbit recently dead produces death attended with the same 

 phenomena as resulted from the injection of the saliva in the first 

 instance. 



/, This serum loses its virulence by filtration. 



g. The micrococcus present in the serum from the connective 

 tissue of a rabbit which has succumbed to a subcutaneous injection of 

 saliva, may be cultivated in bouillon made from the flesh of a healthy 

 rabbit, or in the blood serum obtained from a healthy dog, and 

 these fluids thereby acquire a virulence which they did not have 

 before. 



h. Successive cultures in which but a small drop is taken each 

 time to inoculate a fresh quantity of bouillon, exclude the white and 

 red blood-corpuscles as possible agents in the production of this 

 virulence, and prove conclusively that the veritable cause is the 

 presence of a micrococcus, found first in the saliva, then in the serum 

 from the connective tissue, and (usually) in the blood of the animal 

 killed by the injection of saliva, and finally in each successive culture 

 fluid inoculated (in the first instance) with a small quantity of this 

 serum or blood. 



As to the identity of the micrococcus with M. septicus of Cohn 

 and that found by Pasteur, the author quotes their descriptions, and 



" The foregoing descriptions answer as well for the micrococcus 

 observed by me as if they had been written especially for it, and it 

 is unnecessary for me to say more at present in relation to the 

 morphology of this organism, which apparently is identical with that 

 of the Micrococcus septicus of Cohn, and with the organism found by 

 Pasteur in the ' new disease ' described by him. Does it then 

 follow that the organisms are identical, and that the phenomena 



