372 
SUMMARY OP CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
is best described as var. indica of Leuconostoc mesenterioides , an organism 
which is classed by Zopf among the Coccaceae and not among the 
Bacteriaceee. 
When the organism was cultivated in media containing sugar and with 
an alkaline reaction, the formation of the jelly sheath was constant, the 
same condition, in fact, as occurs in the sugar factories. But in certain 
media, such as potato or substrata devoid of sugar, a sheathless condition, 
having the microscopic characters of a Streptococcus , appears. This 
forms along the inoculation track a thin flake of whitish nodules. 
When transferred to a saccharated medium, the frog-spawn form, with 
its luxuriant growth and gigantic dimensions, reappears. 
A special characteristic of both these forms is their resistance to high 
temperatures, the sheathed form being only killed between 87° and 88°, 
and the sheathless form between 88^° and 86^°, while most Schizomycetes 
and yeasts die between 55° and 70°. 
Leuconostoc mesenterioides can ferment grape sugar, cane sugar, milk 
sugar, malt sugar, and dextrin ; but, except the ferment which inverts 
cane sugar, it does not seem to produce an enzyme either diastatic or 
peptonizing. 
Bactericidal Influence of the Blood.*— Herr H. Kionka records 
experiments made for the purpose of testing the extra-vascular bacteri- 
cidal influence of the blood, and deciding if this action be a pheno- 
menon induced by physical or chemical processes, or whether it is to 
be ascribed to the specific property possessed by the blood as blood. 
The author’s experiments cover the same ground as those of de Christ- 
mas, f and are intended to show that the results obtained by the latter 
may receive a different interpretation. The first set of experiments 
made with anthrax and typhoid bacilli went to show that sudden change 
from one cultivation medium to another did not abolish the bactericidal 
influence. In the second set anthrax and typhoid bacilli and Staph, py. 
aureus were cultivated in body-juices (pleuritic exudate and hydrocele 
fluid), and exposed to the influence of C0 2 after the cultivation media 
had been heated to 55°, the point at which body-juices lose their bacteri- 
cidal influence. The author failed to discover that C0 2 had any power 
to inhibit the growth of micro-organisms.. The third series was made 
with typhoid bacilli, (a) fresh from the human body, (6) old cultivations 
on artificial media. The cultivations were made on various media, 
human blood-serum, peritoneal and pleural exudations, and the results 
showed little difference between the two kinds. 
Is the bactericidal property of blood-serum a vital phenomenon, or 
merely a chemical process ? Such is the question propounded by Prof. 
B. Emmerich, Prof. J. Tsuboi, Dr. Steinmetz, and Dr. O. Low4 and their 
experiments were directed towards the nature of the microbicidal pro- 
teids of serum. To solve the problem, it was necessary to obtain the 
serum proteids in a pure condition, and then to restore the activity and 
germicidal property to those proteid substances which had been rendered 
inert by chemical processes, such as precipitation, drying, &c. 
From a priori considerations this would appear an impossible task ; 
* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasiteuk., xii. (1892) pp. 321-9. 
t Cf. this Journal, 1892, p. 252. 
X Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., xii. (1892) pp. 364-72, 417-26, 449-58. 
