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 toa 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 asmall proportion 
of matter from a diphtheritic mass removed from the tonsils 
of achild that had died of the disease ; this was supposed 
to contain the active organisms of the affection (Dziptherie 
‘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 important and 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. 
