24 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
multiplication of comma bacilli, I have proved by direct experiment. 
In a monkey which had received the previous day a dose of castor 
oil, and had diarrhoea therefrom, the abdomen was opened under the 
spray; a loop of the lower ileum, just above the ileo-csecal valve, 
and about 4 to 6 inches long, was ligatured above and below, care 
being taken not to include in the ligatures the large vessels. With 
a Pravaz syringe a droplet of mucus was withdrawn from the 
interior of the loop, and on examination no comma bacilli could 
with certainty be discovered. With another syringe, about 2 c.cm. 
of a saturated solution of magnesium sulphate w T as injected, the 
loop replaced, and the wound stitched up and dressed antiseptically, 
the whole operation being done under the spray. Immediately 
afterwards the animal received subcutaneously 1 gramme of chloral 
hydrate dissolved in 1 or 2 c.cm. of distilled water Our animal 
was killed after forty-eight hours. On. post-mortem examination the 
ligatured loop was found much injected, its cavity filled with, and 
distended by, mucus containing streaks of blood and numerous 
flakes. On microscopic examination these flakes contained, besides 
amorphous mucus and detached epithelial cells, longer or shorter 
straight thickish bacilli There were present numerous comma 
bacilli, some single, others in dumb-bells On microscopic 
comparison, it was found that they were of the same character as the 
choleraic comma bacilli, except that perhaps they looked a trifle 
smaller than those in the choleraic mucus flakes. Cultivations were 
made of them on six gelatine plates, and in one of these, after three 
days, there were no doubt a few colonies which corresponded with 
those of the choleraic comma bacilli ; this was proved to be the 
case after two more days. Cultivations in gelatine tubes and in 
agar-agar tubes yielded growths indistinguishable from the cholera 
comma bacillus” (. Practitioner , 1887, pp. 324-326). 
In the first place, notwithstanding the failure to find comma 
bacilli before the pathological state was set up, they are assumed to 
be present ; secondly, the material retained in the bowel for two days 
between a couple of ligatures cannot be regarded as representative of 
the material flowing so unobstructedly from the bowel as it does in 
cholera ; thirdly, nothing is said about sterilisation of the needle 
and syringes, so that what they might introduce into the bowel is 
an open question ; fourthly, the microscopic examination of one 
