1888 - 89 .] Messrs Macleod and Milles on Asiatic Cholera. 29 
other fluids to be injected, were sterilised in the hot box before 
being used. 
In all 142 experiments were made. Some of them were carried 
out at the Royal College of Physicians’ Hew Laboratory for Research 
in Edinburgh, but owing to restriction of the number of the experi- 
ments in terms of the vivisection licence, and delays in extending 
or renewing the latter, the rest of the experiments were carried out 
at the Hygienic Institute of the Berlin University. 
The organism used was taken from the stools of a case of Asiatic 
cholera in Shanghai, October 1887 ; pure cultivations being made 
from plates and fresh gelatine tubes being inoculated at intervals 
of from three to six weeks. The organism retained its virulence, 
killing guinea pigs in the following October. 
Thirteen healthy guinea pigs were killed, and the contents of the 
ileum were examined, both microscopically and by means of gelatine 
cultivations on plates. Normally the small intestine of these 
animals was almost empty and contracted. Occasionally a little 
food could be seen in it, but it was never distended, as is seen after 
an animal has been treated with opium as before described, in which 
case its contents are very similar to those of the stomach. In no 
instance was there any organism obtained by cultivation of the 
materials taken from the ileum that could be called comma-shaped, 
though the microscopic examination sometimes furnished such 
forms in small numbers, as well as spirilla, and large, curved, 
worm-like bodies, which latter were most numerous in the csecal 
contents. 
In all the animals injected with cholera material, as well as those 
for control experiments, 5 c.cm. of a 5 per cent, solution of soda 
(Na 2 C0 3 ) were injected into the stomach by means of a catheter, 
ten or twenty minutes later a quantity of cholera material or steril- 
ised broth, and then the opium tincture was introduced into the 
peritoneal cavity, in the quantity, and with the precautions already 
mentioned. The strongly acid reaction of the normal contents of 
the guinea pig’s stomach is by this means neutralised for six hours, 
the opium prevents too rapid passage of the organism through the 
small intestine, and thus affords opportunity for its multiplication. 
Koch states that alcohol has a similar effect on peristaltic movement. 
Klein denies that opium tincture lessens intestinal peristalsis. 
