BACTERIUM COLI COMMUNE. 439 



less or has a pale yellowish or brownish tint, witli little 

 or no greenish color. Its consistence is much less 

 viscid than normal, being often thin and watery. It 

 usually contains small, opaque, yellowish particles or 

 clumps which can be seen floating in it, even through the 

 walls of the gall-bladder. These clumps consist micro- 

 scopically of bile-stained, apparently necrotic, epithelial 

 cells ; leucocytes in small numbers ; amorphous masses 

 of bile-pigment, and bacteria often in zoogloea-like 

 clumps. Similar material is found in the larger bile- 

 ducts. 



The liver frequently contains opaque, whitish or yel- 

 lowish-white spots and streaks of irregular size and 

 shape, which give a peculiar mottling to the organ when 

 present in large number. These areas may be numer- 

 ous, or only one or two may be found. In size they 

 range from minute points to areas of from 2 to 3 cm. in 

 extent. By microscopic examination they are found to 

 represent localities where the liver-cells have undergone 

 necrosis accompanied by emigration of leucocytes, and 

 the cells about them are in a condition of fatty degenera- 

 tion. In sections of the liver masses of the bacilli may 

 be discovered in and about the necrotic foci just de- 

 scribed. 



At these autopsies the colon bacillus is not found 

 generally distributed through the body, but is only to 

 be detected in the bile, liver, and occasionally in the 

 spleen.* 



' Consult paper by Blachstein on this subject, Johns Hopkins Hos- 

 pital Bulletin, 1891, vol. ii., p. 96. 



