240 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
multiply in immense numbers, and manufacture of 
these materials a great quantity of septic poison, at the 
expense of the organism in which they are developed. 
It is now admitted that the chief action of patho- 
genic microbes, or, at any rate, of the most dangerous 
among them, consists in the ptomaines which they 
secrete within the body. This explains why death by 
cholera is so rapid and even sudden, when the comma 
bacillus is still only found in the intestines. Although 
this micro-organism has not been absorbed by the 
intestinal mucous membrane and carried into the 
blood, the poisonous alkaloid, or ptomaine, which it 
secretes is certainly present, and to this the nervous 
symptoms, such as cramp, etc., which characterize this 
disease, may probably be ascribed. 
Pouchet has extracted from the feeces of choleraic 
patients, a special alkaloid of the nature of ptomaine; 
and quite recently, in August, 1885, he has found traces 
of the same alkaloid in infusions of pure culture of 
Koch’s comma bacillus.* 
In conclusion, at the present stage of our know- 
ledge, it may be admitted that the action of patho- 
genic microbes on the system is complex, and may 
be analyzed as follows:—(1) The action of a living 
* This affords the germ of the idea of new process for preparing 
lymph, which has perhaps already been put in practice, A Spanish 
physician states that the secret process employed by Ferran simply 
consists in filtering his culture infusion by means of the Chamberland 
filter, and using this guid for inoculation, since it contains the 
ptomaine of cholera without its bacillus (?). 
