General Diseases. 307 



disease were associated with the presence in the affected 

 part of innumerable microzymes. As regards the agents of 

 infection, he concluded that their presence was the only- 

 constant characteristic of the contagion, for he found that 

 the disease could be produced by the transference to the 

 tissues of a healthy animal of even the smallest fragment of 

 any diseased tissue, and that all diseased tissues contained 

 microzymes in greater or less numbers." 



After giving a short account of a series of experiments, 

 in which the disease was transmitted through five succes- 

 sions of animals, the first inoculative material being taken 

 from a child twelve hours after death, the article proceeds 

 to observe : 



" In ' Virchow's Archiv.' for April of the present year 

 {p. 178), Letzerich relates an interesting case, in which diph- 

 theria was transmitted to a child- through the medium of 

 vaccine lymph ; and he also gives the details of an impor- 

 tant test experiment, in which a dog was inoculated with 

 vaccine matter that had been mixed with a small proportion 

 of matter from a diphtheritic mass removed from the tonsils 

 of a child that had died of the disease ; this was supposed 

 to contain the active organisms of the affection (Diptherie 

 organismus). The dog was inoculated on the left side of 

 the body, near the spine, by eleven points, and three punc- 

 tures, and four wounds. On the third day a soft swelling 

 was observed, and the skin was red and hot ; the wounds 

 were gaping, indurated, and covered with a whitish, doughy- 

 looking exudate. The swelling, it may be mentioned, con- 

 tinued until the dog died. The inoculation points were 

 also somewhat gaping, and in the same condition as the 

 wounds and punctures. From the third day the dog lost 

 its appetite, and there was noted an importantand consider- 

 able periodical increase of temperature. From the seventh 

 day it would eat nothing ; the pulse was small and exceed- 

 ingly quick, and the respiration hurried ; the animal lay on 

 its side, and in this condition died. 

 X— 2 



