286 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 216. 



may be controlled, and perhaps ultimately exter- 

 minated. There seems to be no doubt that the 

 bacillus which was described by Eberth in 1880 is 

 the germ of the disease. On this point Dr. Stern- 

 berg, in a paper read at the meeting of the Asso- 

 ciation of American physicians, says that pathol- 

 ogists are disposed to accept this bacillus as the 

 veritable ' germ ' of typhoid-fever, notwithstand- 

 ing the fact that the final proof that such is the 

 case is still wanting. This would consist in the 

 production in man, or in one of the lower ani- 

 mals, of the specific morbid phenomena which 

 characterize the disease in question, by the intro- 

 duction of pure cultures of the bacillus into the 

 body of a healthy individual. Evidently it is im- 

 practicable to make the test upon man, and thus 

 far we have no satisfactory evidence that any one 

 of the lower animals is subject to the disease as it 

 manifests itself in man. Typhoid-fever discharges 

 have been fed to swine, apes, dogs, cats, guinea- 

 pigs, rabbits, white mice, calves, and fowls, with- 

 out any positive results. The evidence upon the 

 etiological relation which Eberth's bacillus bears to 

 typhoid-fever is summed up as follows : No other 

 organism has been found, after the most careful 

 search, in the deeper portions of the intestinal 

 glands involved in this disease, or in the internal 

 organs. On the other hand, this bacillus has been 

 demonstrated to be constantly present. The va- 

 rious facts observed in connection with this disease 

 indicate that it is due to a micro-organism which 

 is capable of multiplication external to the human 

 body in a variety of organic media, at compara. 

 tively low temperatures, and that it is widely dis- 

 tributed. From the endemic prevalence of the 

 disease over vast areas of the earth's surface, we 

 may infer that it is induced by a hardy micro- 

 organism which forms spores. Eberth's bacillus 

 complies with all of these conditions. The paper 

 of Dr. Sternberg is an admirable resume of all that 

 is best in modern experimentation and research 

 in connection with this bacillus, and may be found 

 in the Transactions of the association of American 

 physicians. 



As SPRING APPROACHES, the interest in cholera 

 begins to revive. It will be remembered that last 

 year a cholera commission was despatched from 

 England to Spain to study the epidemic in that 

 country. The members of the commission were 

 Drs. Ray, Graham Brown, and Sherrington, and 

 represented the Royal society, the University of 

 Cambridge, and the Association for the promotion 



of scientific research. In a preliminary report 

 recently made by them, some of the results of 

 their investigation are given. They failed to find 

 Koch's bacillus in all the cases, and they do not 

 look upon it as being the cause of the disease. 

 They claim to have discovered a new fungus, 

 which has been pronounced to belong to the Chy- 

 tridiaceae. It consists of granular masses and a 

 delicate mycelium. The commission evidently da 

 not feel thoroughly convinced that they have dis- 

 covered the veritable germ of cholera, as they 

 recognize that further investigation is necessary 

 before its etiological relation to cholera is firmly 

 established. For our part, we prefer to accept 

 the views of Koch, whose experience gives him 

 opportunities for investigation possessed by few. 



For several years past, a suspicion has been 

 current among students of glaciology in this, 

 country that the European studies of the drift 

 were not advanced quite as far as similar studies 

 with us. It is not only that our terminal moraines 

 have been traced and mapped with unexpected 

 detail, but they have given great additions to the 

 evidence for land ice as against floating ice action, 

 and they have vastly increased our knowledge of 

 the stj'le of motion characteristic of a continental 

 ice-sheet. Similar revelations have been expected 

 concerning the extinct ice-fields of Europe, as 

 soon as their marginal deposits should receive 

 proper correlation, and the expectation seems well 

 justified by the work of Mr. Carvill Lewis of 

 Philadelphia, who during a two-years' trip abroad 

 has attempted the investigation of the English, 

 and Irish drift-margins after what may be called 

 the American method His studies were presented 

 at last summer's meeting of the British associa- 

 tion, and are now published in the American nat- 

 uralist and in the American journal of science. 

 They give account of curvature and irregularity 

 in the drift-front, of interlobate moraines with 

 kettle-hole topography, like the classic example 

 is Wisconsin, — for in this matter we have our 

 classics at home, — and of the critical differences 

 between the working of floating bergs and creep- 

 ing sheets. This must excite interested comment 

 from those who have not yet made such interpre- 

 tation of glacial deposits, and awaken agreeable 

 anticipation of the greater discoveries yet to be 

 made on continental Europe. 



Another interesting effect of American geo- 

 logical work in Europe appears in a small way in 



