292 APPLIED BACTERIOLOGY 



As an instance of an outbreak possessing many of the 

 characters of cholera, we may recall the Greenwich 

 epidemic diarrhoea outbreak, which began on October 4, 

 1894, and lasted some twenty days, during which there 

 were as many as 245 cases ; the mortality, however, was 

 comparatively low, as there were only eleven deaths. On 

 bacteriological examination, Koch's ' comma ' could not be 

 found, but the Proteus vulgaris and B. coli cofn/munis were 

 present in large quantities in the intestinal contents of the 

 patients. 



Although B. coli or the Proteus vulgaris, or both, were 

 obtained from these cases, these organisms were some- 

 times so mixed up with others that it might be urged that 

 no special significance could be attached to their presence 

 in the bowel contents. In several of the cases Dr. Klein 

 found these organisms present in the small intestine in 

 enormous numbers. Under normal conditions these 

 organisms are never present in the small intestine. The 

 presence of these organisms in such enormous number 

 cannot do otherwise than exert very serious pathogenic 

 effects. 



The metabolic products of the growth of both the 

 B. coli coTnmunis and the Proteus vulgaris, which is par 

 excellence the organism of putrefactive decomposition, when 

 inoculated into the animal body, give rise to symptoms 

 practically clinically identical with those of Asiatic cholera. 



For the cultural characters of the B. coli communis and 

 the Proteus vulgaris, see pp. 438 and 450 respectively. 



Finkler and Prior isolated the organism which bears 

 their name (see ' Vibrio Finkler- Prior,' p. 444), from a case 

 of ' cholera nostras.' This organism, which morphologically 

 resembles Koch's comma, has been assumed by many 

 writers to be the specific organism of so-called English 

 cholera (' cholera nostras '), but there is no evidence that 



