390 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE [chap. 



amounted lo fifty-nine, of the twenty-eight wards of the 

 hospital fifteen were attacked. 



The first cases occurred about midnight, the majority 

 about 2 A.M., and a few between 5 and 6 a.m. of October 

 28th. By noon of the 28th, the epidemic was practically 

 over, no further cases occurring. Dr. Andrewes, the sani- 

 tary officer of the hospital, has investigated the clinical and 

 etiological facts of this epidemic, and from his notes I 

 gather that the cases were not of the choleraic type, vomit- 

 ing and cramps being conspicuously absent. In all cases 

 the onset was sudden and consisted in abdominal pains 

 followed by copious watery evacuations with numerous 

 mucus flakes ; in the severe cases, the discharges were con- 

 siderable in amount and frequency and contained much 

 blood ; in such cases there was also prostration and even 

 collapse, all cases recovered. 



Examining specimens of the evacuations under the micro- 

 scope, they were found to contain numerous red and white 

 blood corpuscles and crowds of bacteria. Amongst these a 

 very large number of oval glistening spores attracted atten- 

 tion ; these were either free, isolated and in continuous 

 masses, or they were contained within cylindrical bacilli, 

 each of these bacilli containing one spore nearer to one end. 

 These spores and spore-bearing bacilli were found abund- 

 antly in every one of the evacuations that had been 

 examined. As the occurrence of such an abundance of 

 spores and spore-bearing bacilli in the human intestine is an 

 unusual feature, special attention was directed to them and 

 cultivations were made to isolate them. The only two 

 known species of spores and spore-forming bacilli in the 

 intestine that had to be here considered were (i) the aerobic 

 Bacillus mesentericus and (2) the anaerobic Bacillus amylo- 

 bacter. The last-named could be at once excluded, from 



