486 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. Y., No. 123. 



in seventy-nine cases of cholera examined in Cal- 

 cutta. 2. He demonstrated pure cultures of the 

 comma bacillus from France, Italy, and Germany, 

 all exactly alike. 3. He considers it proven that this 

 comma bacillus occurs only in cholera, may be differ- 

 entiated from others similar to it, and is diagnostic 

 of the disease. 4. He demonstrated inoculation ex- 

 periments upon animals, as follows : — 



Five cubic centimetres of a five-per-cent solution of 

 sodic carbonate, and in twenty minutes ten cubic cen- 

 timetres of meat-broth containing a pure culture of 

 the comma bacillus, were injected into the stomach 

 of each guinea-pig. Immediately afterwards lauda- 

 num (one centimetre for each two hundred grams 

 weight) was injected into the abdominal cavity. 

 This served to narcotize the animals for one-half an 

 hour to one hour. The next day they were ill, with 

 bristling hair, great weakness of the hind-legs and 

 muscles of the back, and died in from one to three 

 days. Section showed swelling of the intestinal 

 glands, and the stomach and coecum full of an alka- 

 line, colorless, flocculent fluid, containing almost 

 a pure culture of the comma bacillus. This experi- 

 ment was made upon eighty-five guinea-pigs. 



Similar experiments were made with Finkler and 

 Prior, and Denecke's bacillus, but in much smaller 

 number. The results were very different, Finkler' s 

 bacillus producing putrefaction in the intestinal con- 

 tents, as shown by their smell. 



Therapeutic experiments upon the inoculated ani- 

 mals showed merely that large doses of calomel, or 

 the use of naphthaline, would prolong the life of the 

 animal for a day at most. The comma bacillus is 

 easily destroyed by drying and other disinfectants, 

 as by a one-half-per-cent solution of carbolic acid. 



The observations upon man, considered by Klein 

 and Macnamara to be of the nature of infection ex- 

 periments, Koch took up again, and showed, that, of 

 the one hundred and fifty physicians who took the 

 ' cholera course ' in Berlin, but one had cholerine, 

 and comma bacilli were found in his dejections. 



He has also found that the comma bacillus will 

 live in well-water thirty days, in dirty canal-water 

 seven days, twenty-four hours in the contents of a 

 privy, three to four days in moist linen, eighty-one 

 days in the harbor- water of Marseilles (Nicati and 

 Kietsch), and more than one hundred and forty-four 

 days on agar-agar. Koch has never found any rest- 

 ing form at all like the spore stage of some other 

 bacteria. 



Pettenkofer confessed himself not convinced. He 

 said the inoculation experiments were unsatisfactory. 

 Those made with Emmerich's short staffs at Naples 

 and at Munich were much more so. The manner in 

 which Koch inoculated his animals threw no light 

 upon the subject, for only man had the disease. He 

 cannot agree that the comma bacillus is more than 

 a usual accompaniment of cholera. The epidemi- 

 ological knowledge of cholera is to be completed by 

 considering the comma bacillus its cause, — a difficult 

 thing to prove, since drying kills this organism ; and 

 yet in lower Bengal a dry year is notoriously a favora- 

 ble one for the disease. 



The comma bacilli are found only in the intestines, 

 not in the organs ; and yet the intestinal glands are 

 highly absorptive. Cholera is not a combination of 

 infection and intoxication, but an infectious disease, 

 pure and simple. It is possible that in the future 

 Emmerich's staffs may be found to be the cause of 

 the disease. These are found in the organs of the 

 inoculated animals, and produce cholera-like vomit- 

 ing and diarrhoea. Before fully accepting the bacil- 

 lus, more must be known of the epidemiology of the 

 disease. Since cholera is not communicated directly, 

 so the cholera-germ is not ; and, since cholera de- 

 pends upon place and time, the cholera-germ must 

 be governed in the same way. 



ROLLESTON' S LIFE AND WORK. 



Rolleston' s worthiest memorials are the 

 growing school of biology at Oxford, and the 

 important zoological and anthropological col- 

 lections of its university museum. His re- 

 markable energy, however, enabled him not 

 only to do his work as a teacher, and take the 

 part of a leader in university politics, but to 

 add to knowledge by investigations in many 

 subjects. His original papers, dealing with 

 topics pertaining to anatomy, physiology, zool- 

 ogy, archeology, and anthropology, are scat- 

 tered over the pages of different journals, and 

 the reports and transactions of various socie- 

 ties. It is well that some of his friends have 

 collected these scattered writings, and secured 

 their republication in the volumes before us. 

 Professor Turner of Edinburgh has edited them ; 

 and Prof. E. B. Tylor of Oxford has added a 

 brief biography, which is full of interest as giv- 

 ing a clew to the source of the remarkable 

 influence which Rolleston was able to exert in 

 favor of natural science, at a time when the 

 traditions, and the preponderance of the sen- 

 timent of his university, were against such 

 studies. 



Rolleston' s father, vicar and chief land-owner 

 of a small Yorkshire parish, was a good classi- 

 cal scholar, and undertook the primary educa- 

 tion of his son, who, it is said, was able to 

 translate Homer at sight when only ten years 

 of age. The lad had, from the first, something 

 of the tastes and instincts of the naturalist : he 

 read Izaak Walton, and Gilbert White's ever- 

 charming ' Selborne,' and in his play-hours 

 mounted the skeletons of mice and weasels, 

 and stuffed the skins of birds and beasts of 

 the neighborhood. After subsequent years at 

 school, he won a classical scholarship at Pem- 

 broke college, Oxford, and began residence. in 



Scientific addresses and papers. By G-eorge Rolleston, 

 M.D., F.R.S., Linacre professor of anatomy and physiology, 

 and fellow of Merton college. 2 vols. Oxford, Clarendon pre is, 

 1884. 76+947 p., portr., illustr., 5 pi. 8°. 



