16 
president’s address. 
disease. When a pure cultivation of this bacillus is inoculated 
into the nasal cavity of any of the lower animals, it invariably 
produces typical glanders. Happily for us, this dreadful disease is 
almost unknown in Great Britain, at least in the human subject. 
Two micro-organisms, the Bacillus malarias of Klebs, and the 
Plasmodium malaria >, discovered by March iafava in Italy, are looked 
upon by many as the chief factors in the origin of Ague or 
Intermittent Fever. The latter of the two micro-organisms is 
found in the red blood globules of patients affected with malaria ; 
but as pure cultivations of the Plasmodium have not yet been 
obtained, positive proof of their being the prime factor in the 
disease is still wanting. The Bacillus malarias has been found in 
the soil of the Pontine Marshes, near Pome, where malaria is very 
prevalent ; but I am not aware that it has ever been found in the 
bodies of malarial patients. 
There are only two pathogenic spirilla of any importance. They 
are — 
The spirillum or Spiroclicde obermeieri named after its dis- 
coverer, Obermeier, which gives rise to Relapsing Fever, one of 
the Continued Fevers, allied to Typhus Fever. This microbe 
cannot be cultivated outside the body, and all attempts to inoculate 
the lower animals with it have been unsuccessful ; although the 
disease is readily conveyed to man and animals when they are 
inoculated with the blood of a fever patient containing the 
Spiroclicde. The microbe disappears from the blood during the 
febrile remission, and re-appears again during the period of relapse. 
The disease is unknown in England, but I saw a good deal of it 
in Berlin during the Franco-German war, and a very formidable 
and fatal malady it seemed. 
The spirillum of Cholera has already been referred to under the 
head of bacilli. 
There are one or two other vegetable micro-organisms on my list, 
about which I should have liked to say a word or two, but time 
will not permit me to do so. With regard to the way in which 
these various discase-genns destroy life, it is not supposed 
now-a-days that the microbes themselves are the direct cause of 
