16 Relation of Microscoj)iG Fungi to [^}SS^]lZS?!!i8^^ 
it tlien occurred to him to subject these animals to experimental 
infection. However ridiculous may appear experiments on white 
mice, the sequel will show how singularly fortunate was the acci- 
dent which led him to employ these animals. He had some sixty 
white mice ; and in order to trace the effects of cholera evacuations 
upon these animals in a reasonable way, and to imitate the probable 
conditions under which men might be infected, he dipped small 
pieces of blotting-paper, about an inch in width, into some cholera 
evacuation. The first paper he dipped on the first day ; and the 
second paper he dipped on the second day into evacuation which 
had stood for one day, and so on ; and in this way he obtained a 
series of slips dipped into the cholera ev-acuations on the first, 
second, third, fourth, and so on to the fifteenth day. Each cholera 
evacuation therefore yielded him fourteen or fifteen slips of paper. 
Each bit was soaked with an exceedingly small quantity of the 
matter contained in the evacuations. He then took a series of 
mice in cages, and which were all observed before and found 
healthy ; and he gave to each mouse, or each couple of mice, two 
square inches of the paper which had been infected. The conse- 
quences were, that of the whole number of mice employed, a 
certain percentage became ill. They had bloody diarrhoea, or 
diarrhoea, and they became cold and refused to eat their food ; and 
many of them died. 
In the experiments which I made during the summer of 1866 
in the pathological laboratory of St. Thomas's Hospital, the result 
was exactly the same as in the experiment of Thiersch. I had 
forty-eight mice in twenty-four cages. They were all infected in 
the same manner with cholera evacuations obtained from cholera 
patients, and the result was as follows. Some of the mice became 
affected with colourless or bloody diarrhoea, and loss of urinary 
secretion. They became cold. Their temperature sunk, so that 
the hand could feel the loss of heat.* Some became stiff so as to 
appear dead, while yet feebly living. They were positively stiff, so 
that the animals could not straighten their bodies or recover them 
from the position in which they were lying. There was in short a 
kind of cramp, just as in cholera cases. Some died in such position 
that it is probable that spasm was one of the ultimate symptoms. 
For instance, some died as if they were sitting before their food and 
eating it. This is a very unusual position for animals to die in, as 
during the agony they mostly fall on their side. The intestines 
of the dead mice were filled with whitish matter, and their abdomen 
was always expanded. Here you have then, a resemblance to human 
cholera which cannot escape consideration. Most of the animals 
* An easy mode of measuring the temperature of a mouse is to put it into a 
narrow tube ; it will then coil up, and a thermometer placed into the centre of the 
coil easily shows the heat of its body. 
