56 



DE. BASTIAN ON THE 



manifest itself when we deal with lower incubating-temperatures, 

 as from 77°-96° F. (25°-35° C), rather than with 122° F. 



The fermentation which takes place in boiled or superheated 

 urine is altogether different from that which occurs in unseated 

 urine in open vessels. Even when the fluid has become quite 

 turbid, it is never foetid. The odour may be either quite un- 

 altered in this respect, or, at most, there may be a slight increase 

 of its urinous character *. As a rule, too, the organisms found are 

 Bacilli (fig. 7, a), either short and unjointed (straight or bent); 

 or longer, and representing what I have hitherto described asYibri- 

 ones ; or, longer still, in the form of unjointed Leptothrix threads. 

 I have all along contended that these were merely different forms 

 of the same organism f ; and now tliis is the accepted view, and 

 they are all regarded, in accordance with the nomenclature of 

 Cohn and Eid^m, as Bacilli of different lengths. In airless 

 flasks nothing like spore-formation shows itself in the filaments ; 

 so that in this respect the Bacillus of urine agrees with that of 

 hay and of splenic fever. There is a still further agreement, 

 since in open vessels, or in those which are merely plugged with 

 cotton-wool, a scum forms on the surface of boiled urine inoculated 

 with Bacilli in twenty-four hours — when at a temperature of 100° F. 

 (38° C.) — composed, in the main, of filaments which within forty- 

 eight hours will show the highly refractive bodies in their interior 

 (5), and, indeed, partly break up (c) after this so-called "spore-" 

 formation. All this agrees with the description which has been 

 given by Cohn and Koch of the hay-Bacillus and of that of sple- 

 nic fever. It is quite evident, therefore, that we must recognize 

 the existence of a urine-Bacillus ; but I do not on that account 

 attempt to confer upon it any new specific name. Such a proce- 

 dure would, I think, not only tend to confirm erroneous notions 

 as to the distinctness of the life-history of these lower forms, but 

 would be utterly useless even from the point of view of the 

 species-makers. One might at once describe as new species and 

 dignify with new names the Bacillus of turnip-infusion, that of 

 cucumber, and of fifty other fluids. But would any rational end 

 be attained thereby ? 



^ In partly neutralized diabetic urine which has undergone fermentation in 

 an airless vessel, I have on two or three occasions found an extreme fcetidity of 

 the fluid ; and this is, moreover, an extremely common occurrence where turnip- 

 infusion ferments under the same conditions. 



t See 'Nature,' July 14, 1870, p. 221. 



