1885.] 



Pielation of Bacteria to Asiatic Cholera. 



157 



diseases, in the mouths of healthy persons, and as shown recently, even 

 in some common articles of food. 



8. The experiments performed by Koch and others on animals do 

 not in the least prove that the comma bacilli are capable of producing 

 cholera or any other disease. The results obtained by them are much 

 easier explained in a manner opposed to that given by Koch and 

 others. 



9. There is direct evidence to show that the water contaminated 

 with choleraic evacuations, and containing, of course, the comma 

 bacilli, when used for domestic purposes, including drinking, by a 

 large number of persons, did not produce cholera. 



10. The mucus flakes taken from the small intestine of a typical 

 rapidly fatal case of cholera contain numerous mucus corpuscles filled 

 with peculiar minute straight bacilli ; in this state they are found 

 when the examination is made very soon after death ; soon, however, 

 the mucus corpuscles swell up and disintegrate, and then their 

 bacilli become free. 



The small bacilli are never missed in the mucus flakes. They are 

 only one-third or one-fourth the length of the comma bacilli, and 

 about half their thickness. They are non-mobile ; they grow well in 

 Agar-Agar jelly, but show in their mode of growth no peculiarity by 

 which they could be considered as specific. When grown on the free 

 surface of the nourishing material they form spores. 



11. These small bacilli are not present in the blood, in the mucous 

 membrane of the intestine, or in any other tissue. 



12. Experiments made with these small bacilli on animals pro- 

 duced no result. 



13. Since my return to London I have ascertained that the comma 

 bacilli of cholera show two distinct modes of division, one the known 

 one of transverse division, and a second one of division in length. 

 When growing in Agar- Agar jelly at the ordinary temperature of the 

 room, after some days the bacilli swell up owing to the appearance in 

 their protoplasm of one or more vacuoles ; as these vacuoles increase, 

 so the comma bacilli become gradually changed first into plano- 

 convex, then into oblong bi-convex, and ultimately into circular 

 corpuscles. The longer the original comma bacillus, the larger the 

 final circle. These circular organisms are mobile just as the comma 

 bacilli, and by disintegration of the protoplasm at two opposite points 

 tw r o perfect more or less semicircular comma bacilli are formed. 

 Growing the comma bacilli in A gar- Agar jelly kept at higher 

 temperatures (30-40° C), they multiply by transverse division only, 

 but transferring these to Agar- Agar jelly and keeping this at the 

 ordinary temperature of the room, they again gradually change into 

 circular organisms, which, by division in the diameter of the circle, 

 form two new comma bacilli. 



