32 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
ill, with, or without vomiting or cramps, or if there has been no 
purging, in the contents of the more or less distended, congested, 
rose-red, and paralysed-looking small intestine ; these contents being 
watery, and containing white flakes. 
If these appearances were present in man after having been dosed 
with a pure cultivation of comma bacilli, in a country where no 
cholera was about, would they not be accepted as proof of the pre- 
sence of Asiatic cholera, even if that man had swallowed a dose of 
soda solution, and had received a dose of opium tincture into his 
peritoneal cavity % 
If this test is to be accepted in man, why is it not to be accepted 
in the guinea pig 1 
On post-mortem examination of those animals, so dosed with 
comma bacilli, and death following, as described, the blood was 
fluid, thicker and darker than natural ; the tissues of the thoracic 
and abdominal walls were markedly dry; the small intestine was 
throughout distended, congested, and paralysed-looking, and occupied 
a much larger proportion of the abdominal cavity than usual. The 
caecum was distended with fluid or semi-fluid contents. If the 
animal had died early, the fluid was not quite clear in the small gut, 
there being present traces of food; still the watery character was 
very manifest, and mucous flakes were abundant. If the animal had 
died on the second or third day, no food remains were to be seen, 
and the fluid in the small gut the counterpart of the typical cholera 
stool of man. In either case the comma bacilli were demonstrated 
microscopically, and by cultivation, as in man. While the organism 
in the broth injected could be frequently counted in a microscopic 
field, in a drop of the small bowel contents from an animal having 
received such broth the bacilli might be so numerous that counting 
them without dilution of the fluid examined was an impossibility. 
On floating the bowel in water, the stripping of the epithelium could 
be well demonstrated. Two animals, not included amongst those 
already mentioned, died on the fifth and eighth days respectively 
after injection of cholera material. In them no trace of comma 
bacilli could be found. From the appearance of the bowel it might 
be inferred that they had died in the reaction stage. In one case 
(that of death on the eighth day) the intestine was lax, congested, 
the epithelial lining extensively stripped, and Peyer’s patches could 
