ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 
375 
of a quite similar set of cases, i. e. influenza with and without pneumonia, 
it is found that the author discovers Diplococcus pneumonise in tolerable 
frequency, while Kibbert does not mention this microbe at all. 
Dr. fobbert * examined seven cases dead of influenza for bacteria. 
Cultivations were made from lungs, trachea, spleen, and kidney, on agar. 
Having found, in five cases Streptococcus pyogenes vel erysipelatis, the 
author asks if this microbe can be the excitant of influenza. If this be 
the case it is obvious that this Streptococcus must have acquired, 
temporarily at least, pathogenic properties, differing a good deal from 
those usually attributed to it, but it may be acknowledged that, when 
once the disease has been set up, this micro-organism plays at least an 
important though secondary part. 
Chicken-Cholera Microbes.! — Dr. 0. Katz, who was entrusted with 
the investigation of the fowl-cholera question in Australia, finds that 
when material of undoubted virulence (blood pure cultivations) is 
subcutaneously injected, rabbits invariably succumb, and usually in a 
short time, some dying in 7-8 hours. When fed with food contaminated 
with these bacteria, the rabbits were nearly always found to die, the 
average duration of the disease being 18-25 hours. 
The liquid medium used by the author for cultivation of the microbes 
was rabbit flesh infusion or broth. This was made by mixing finely 
chopped up rabbit flesh with twice its weight of distilled water, and 
allowing the mixture to stand for 21 hours in a cool place, stirring 
from time to time, filtering and pressing through cheese-cloth, steaming, 
filtering again, neutralizing with 20 per cent, aqueous solution of 
anhydrous carbonate of soda, steaming and filtering again, and ultimately 
filling into different sized cotton-wool-plugged sterilized test-tubes, 
which with their contents were thereupon discontinuously sterilized. 
Other cultivations were made with the foregoing fluid to which 1 per 
cent, peptone and 0 * 5 per cent. NaCl were added. Of the solid media 
the most used was a 6 per cent, rabbit broth peptone gelatin. 
The author’s experiments on the “ immunization ” conferred by 
sterilized broth cultivations against a subsequent infection by active 
cultures lead him to admit the great possibility of the protective power 
of this “ vaccination ” ; but his experiments are too few for a certain 
conclusion. 
With regard to the question. Is chicken cholera a contagious disease 
among rabbits ? the author’s experiments were considerably in favour of a 
positive answer ; although, from the conditions under which the animals 
were placed, these experiments were marred in consequence of the great 
mortality due to causes other than chicken-cholera. 
The question whether the virus of chicken-cholera is affected by its 
transmission through rabbits in successive generations, is answered in 
the negative. For this purpose twenty generations were used, and on 
summing up the results the author found that there was neither an 
increase nor a decrease in the virulence. 
Further experiments were made to ascertain how far certain indi- 
♦ Deutsche Med. Wochenschrift, 1890, No. 4. See Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. 
Parasitenk., vii. (1890) pp. 273-5. 
t Proc. Soc. Linn. N.S.W., iv. (1889) pp. 513-97. 
