750 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
2 per cent, agar and 1 part acid urine, either taken or made sterile. 
Further cultivations on this medium were difficult, but inoculations 
with two days old cultures of the first generation excited a suppurative 
urethritis in 48 hours. 
Rapid Method for making Nutrient Agar.* — Dr. J. L. Schutz 
prepares agar in the following expeditious way : — 1500 ccm. of water and 
18 grm. of agar are boiled together in an open vessel. While boiling, 
2 grm. of Liebig’s meat extract are added. After boiling for half an 
hour, the solution is removed from the fire and cooled down to 60° C. 
To it are then added 10 grm. of dry pepton, 5 grm. of salt, and a 
hen’s egg, in as much water as has been lost by evaporation. The 
strongly alkaline reaction is now reduced to a slightly alkaline or neutral 
one by the addition of HC1. The mixture is then boiled again for 5-10 
minutes, after which it is filtered through a white filter paper. The fil- 
tration of a litre of this fluid does not take longer than 3-5 minutes. 
If the filtrate be not perfectly clear, the white of another egg must be 
added, and the whole reboiled until the albumen has coagulated. When 
the solution is transparent and thin it is easily filtered; if not, the 
reaction is too alkaline. To this agar, 4 per cent, glycerin may be 
added, so as to render it suitable for Esmarch’s roll tubes. 
Instead of meat extract fresh meat may be used; if so, 1/2 kilo of 
finely chopped meat is digested in 1500 ccm. of water for 30 minutes 
at 50° C. ; the mass is squeezed in a linen cloth, and having been boiled 
for 5 minutes, the whole is filtered. To the filtrate the agar is added, 
and the further treatment is as before. 
As the reaction is usually markedly acid, the mixture must be 
alkalinized or neutralized with a saturated solution of sodium car- 
bonate. 
Nutrient Media containing Alkali Albuminates.-j- — Herr Deycke 
recommends a medium composed of 1 per cent, veal alkali albuminate, 
1 per cent, peptone, 1/2 per cent, salt, 2 per cent, agar, 5 per cent, 
glycerin, and 1/2 per cent, soda for cultivating the cholera vibrio, and 
the bacilli of anthrax, diphtheria, and tubercle. The author has found it 
extremely useful for the rapid diagnosis of cholera and diphtheria. 
(2) Preparing- Objects. 
Preparation and Preservation of Embryos of Chelonia.f — Prof. 
K. Mitsukuri preserved nearly all his young embryos in Kleinenberg’s 
picro-sulphuric acid ; very advanced embryos were placed in the same, 
or in corrosive sublimate. The spot where the blastoderm was to be 
found was generally marked with a hair, as the thin layer of white 
which was necessarily left over it, coagulates in the preserving fluid, 
and hides it entirely from view. After three or four hours incisions at 
right angles were made with a sharp knife on three sides of the blasto- 
derm. A little manipulation with forceps or scalpel easily separated 
the superficial coagulated white from the blastoderm beneath ; the 
* Johns Hopkins Hospital Bull., iii. (1894) p. 92. 
t Deutsche Med. Wochenschr., 1894, No. 25. See Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. 
Parasitenk., xvi. (1894) p. 542. 
f Journ. Coll. Sci. Imp. Univ. Japan, vi. (1894) pp. 229-31 (1 fig.). 
