GENERAL DISEASES. 289 



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 successions of 

 animals, the first inoculative material being taken from a 

 child twelve hours after death, the article proceeds to ob- 

 serve : 



'• 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 important 

 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 tlie tonsils of a child 

 that had died of the disease : this was supposed to contain 

 active organisms of the affection (JDiptherie organismus). 

 The dog was inoculated on the left side of the body, near the 

 spine, by eleven points, and three punctures, 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 swel- 

 ling, it may be mentioned, continued 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 considerable periodical increase of tem- 

 perature. From the seventh day it would eat nothing ; the 

 pulse was small and exceedirigly quick, and. the respiration 

 hurried ; the animal lay on its side, and in this condition 



died. 



" On examination of the body, it was discovered that in 

 the swollen baggy part of the skin where the inoculations had 

 been made, there was fibrinous infiltration of the subcuta- 

 neous connective tissue, with haemorrhagic patches of a 

 bluish-black or dirty, light-red color, that passed deep into 



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