256 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
is put at the bottom of a bell-glass which covers a 
culture of comma bacilli, it arrests their development 
and destroys them within forty-eight hours. 
When cholera is epidemic, it has been suggested 
that rum or cognac should be taken, to which salicylic 
acid is added, in the proportion of 25 grammes to the 
litre. A petit verre, or three teaspoonsful, of this mixture 
may be taken between meals in coffee,-tea, or grog. 
Redard has been recently occupied with the dis- 
infection of the railway-waggons used for the trans- 
port of cattle. He regards most of the substances 
employed, including sulphurous acid, as insufficient. 
The only effectual process is by steam, at a tempera- 
ture of 110°, which may be easily procured at the 
railway stations. 
As we have already said, the oxygen contained in 
air is an excellent antiseptic, and the attempt has 
been made to employ it; but the experiments of Bert 
and Regnard show that bacteria are only destroyed 
by oxygen at a high pressure. As for oxygenated 
water, it has not yet afforded the results which were 
expected from it. 
Finally, each species ef microbe appears to be 
more or less sensitive to the action of different 
therapeutic agents. Thus the effect of mercurial salts 
on the microbe of syphilis was known before the 
existence of the microbe ityelf was known; that of 
the salts of quinine and arsenic on the microbes of 
intermittent fever, ete. 
