174 



SCIENCE. 



reply to Mr. Warington the speaker said that the acetic 

 acid fermentation went on in the presence of chloroform. 



Mr. KlNGZETT called attention to the fact that the i 

 oxygen was completely used up when the meat infusion 

 was placed in contact with air. He did not think the ex- 

 periments represented the action of bacteria on gases or 

 of gases on bacteria, but rather the effects of various 

 gases on the mode and extent of ordinary putrefaction. 



Dr. Frankland expressed his satisfaction with the 

 results obtained by the author in his laborious research i 

 He must confess that these results had surprised him not 

 a little. The fact that bacteria, which were real organ- 

 isms and could not be shielded under the term putrefac- 

 tion, lived and flourished in S0 2 , CO, CN, &c, seemed to 

 him very extraordinary, and the question arose whether 

 the germs to which infectious diseases were probably 

 due were not similarly endowed with a power of great re- 

 sistance to ordinary influences. 



Mr. F. J. M. Page said that Dr. Baxter had proved 

 that with some fever-producing liquids, their virulence 

 was destroyed by chlorine and sulphuric acid, and that 

 he had seen some experiments at the Brown Institution 

 which led to the same conclusion ; so it seemed that, at 

 all events in some cases, the virulence of infective liquids 

 was due to organic matter, essentially different from the 

 bacteria observed by Mr. Hatton. 



NOTES ON CHICKEN" CHOLERA. 



We observe in a recent number of the Chemical News 

 that C. T. Kingzett, F. C. S., points out, that, in explain- 

 ing the protective influence of repeated inoculations with 

 the attenuated virus of chicken cholera, against the more 

 virulent forms of this disease, Pasteur finds it " impossible 

 to resist the idea that the microscopic germ which causes 

 the disease, finds in the body of the animal conditions 

 suitable to its development, and that to satisfy the neces- 

 sities of its life the germ alters certain substances, or de- 

 stroys them, which comes to the same thing, whether it 

 assimilates them or whether it consumes them with oxy- 

 gen borrowed from the blood." 



So, again, in cases where complete immunity has been 

 attained, the birds " no longer contain food for the germ." 



More striking still is the following passage in reference 

 to chickens which are born proof against cholera : — 

 " Animals in this condition may be said to be born vac- 

 cinated for this disease, because the foetal evolution has 

 not placed in their bodies the proper food of the parasite, 

 or because substances which would serve as such food 

 have disappeared while they were yet young. 



Now whether or not we may be prepared to regard the 

 said parasite as the direct cause of the disease, it is re- 

 markable that the reasoning of Pasteur should have cul- 

 minated in the conclusion upon which Liebig insisted 

 with considerable power. 



If we turn to Oregon's (3rd) edition of Liebig's 

 "Animal Chemistry " (p. 205) we find the following pas- 

 sage : — " The condition which determines, in a second in- 

 dividual, his liability to the contagion, is the presence in 

 his body of a substance which by itself, or by means of the 

 vital force acting in the organism, offers no resistance to 

 the cause of change in form and composition operating 

 on it. If this substance be a necessary constituent of the 

 body, then the disease must be communicable to all per- 

 sons ; if it be an accidental constituent, then only those 

 persons will be attacked by the disease in whom it is pre- 

 sent in the proper quantity and of the proper composition. 

 The course of the disease is the destruction and removal 

 of this substance : it is the establishment of an equilibrium 

 between the cause acting in the organism which deter- 

 mines the normal performance of its functions and a 

 foreign power by whose influence these functions are 

 altered." 



I repeat that to me it seems somewhat remarkable that 

 the investigations and reasoning of two such eminent (and 



in many matters diametrically opposed) thinkers should 

 have culminated in the same conclusion as regards the 

 conditions of the living body which subject it to, or protect 

 it from, infection. 



While, however, it can be readily understood how a pro- 

 fuse growth of parasites could quickly alter or destroy a 

 comparatively large amount of substance — as, for in- 

 stance, happens in ordinary putrefaction — it does not ap- 

 pear to me so easy to accept Pasteur's reasoning as to 

 his so-called vaccination. 



In this inflicted process an attenuated virus is introduced 

 into the body of a chicken which becomes ill but does not 

 die. It does not die because, if Pasteur be correct, the 

 parasites do not sufficiently multiply. Why do they not 

 multiply ? It cannot be on account of the insufficiency of 

 the pabulum, for in the large majority of cases where 

 death results this seems to arise from the very profusion 

 of the growth of the parasite when more freely introduced. 



Can it be expected, therefore, that even, say, in three suc- 

 cessive inoculations the substance which I ha\ e here spoken 

 of as pabulum can be entirely removed or destroyed by the 

 very limited number of parasites which are introduced by 

 the inoculations, and which so soon perish in the body ? 

 I think this cannot be expected ; but if it may be, then the 

 particular substance or substances upon which the para- 

 sites prey must be extremely limited in quantity. After all, 

 we are faced with the enormous difficulty of ascertaining 

 the nature of such substance, and the further equally great 

 difficulty of understanding why an undiscovered and unde- 

 termined substance should be entirely absent from the 

 bodies in some animals and present in varying proportions 

 in others. 



Here we come in contact with the weakest point in the 

 parasitic theory. The immunity from a second attack of 

 an infectious disease of the class in question is simply in- 

 explicable under the parasitic theory. We are forced back 

 to an alternative theory, and that is one of which we at 

 present only recognize the beginnings. 



A NEW CORTICAL CENTRE.* 

 By Graeme M. Hammond, M.D., New York. 



Physician to the Department for Diseases of the Nervous System in the 

 Metropolitan Throat Hospital. 



Some six years ago there appeared in the Centralblatt, 

 Nos. 37 and 38, a short communication by Betz, embody- 

 ing an account of certain nerve-cells found by him in the 

 cortex of a region of the brain which he newly named the 

 paracentral lobule. This paper has probaLly aroused 

 more general attention among neurologists than any other 

 paper of recent times dealing with the structure of the 

 cerebral hemispheres, and this, on account of the ana- 

 tomical confirmation which the discovery seemed to 

 furnish, of the localization doctrine based on the electrical 

 stimulation of the cortex carried out by Hitzig and 

 Fritsche. 



After localizing these cells chiefly in the paracentral 

 lobule and the upper ends of the pre- and post-central 

 gyri of man, stating them to be very few in number in 

 the lower halves of these gyri, Betz proceeds to say, 

 "the constancy of the occurrence of these cells, not only 

 as regards the cortical layer, but also the special convo- 

 lutions in which they are found, led me to direct my at- 

 tention to that portion of the brain of animals, and par- 

 ticularly of the dog, on which latter Hitzig and Fritsche 

 obtained such brilliant physiological results. I refer to 

 that lobule which bounds the sulcus cruciatus. Now I 

 found in this very lobule in the dog, cells in similar nests 

 and of a similar shape. With the dog as in man they 

 are distributed in the fourth layer." 



Engaged in a study of the ganglionic masses of the 

 forebrain of the cat, an animal on which the experiments 

 of Hitzig and Fritsche have been repeated, and in which 



* Read before the New York Neurological So:iety, February i, 1881. 



