268 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE [chap. 



fallen do the bacilli occur in the blood with anything like 

 constancy, considering that in thirty-seven out of forty-three 

 cases no bacilli could be found, in each case at least four 

 cover-glass specimens, in some six and even eight, being 

 made, stained by the appropriate methods, that is to say by 

 methods by which they are readily shown in the positive 

 cases. But also the extremely varying number in which 

 the bacilli occurred in the six positive cases indicates that 

 their presence in the blood cannot be of the same essential 

 value for the disease as is the case in the typical acute 

 infectious diseases — " blood-diseases,'' of which the various 

 known septicaemias, anthrax, and fowl cholera are types. 

 This view is strongly borne out by the consideration that in 

 all six cases in which the bacilli were found in the blood in 

 the cover-glass specimens they could not be demonstrated 

 in culture, the media used for these cultures being (as 

 will presently be shown) perfectly suitable for the living 

 bacilli of the bronchial sputum. This would appear to 

 indicate that the bacilli found in the six affirmative cases 

 were not living, and that any baciUi of influenza that may 

 gain access to the circulation lose here their vitality and 

 are present in the blood only as dead bacilli. Canon 

 {Deutsche Med. Wochenschr., No. 2, 1892) states that 

 he found in all cover glass films of blood of influenza a 

 particular kind of bacillus present in numbers varying from 

 five to twenty, the bacilli and the nuclei of the white cells 

 being stained blue, the blood discs and the body of the 

 leucocytes pink. Now, our observations do not bear out 

 this statement of Canon, since by the same methods as he 

 used we stained the specimens for even a longer time 

 than he did we failed to find bacilli in thirty-seven out 

 of forty three cases, and we therefore, in opposition to 

 him, do not consider the presence of these bacilli as of 



