90 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
the reverse is the case if the temperature be raised to 60°-80’, the other 
conditions remaining the same. 
Rabbit’s blood-serum, too, possesses an antitoxic property, but in a 
weaker degree than the spleen. 
Immunity to Anthrax.* — Dr. G. Gabritschewsky records some 
experiments made with the view, first, of finding if it were possible to 
render animals immune by repeated inoculation with greatly diluted 
virulent anthrax cultivations; and, secondly, whether the blood and 
juices of animals which had been made artificially immune could impart 
immunity to animals sensitive to anthrax. 
In the first series four sets of experiments are recorded, in which 
dilutions of the cultivations 1:20, 1 : 200, 1 : 500, 1 : 10,000, were 
injected. It was calculated that in O' 19 ccm. of the last dilution there 
were from 2—10 bacilli. With but one exception all the animals died, 
and on the survivor the experiments are not yet concluded. 
It is right to say that one rabbit which had lived through two 
injections succumbed to a third. 
This method, which has proved successful in symptomatic anthrax, 
swine erysipelas, and Diplococcus pneumonise, fads with anthrax. 
The second series is interesting because, as is usual with experi- 
mental bacteriology, it is in direct opposition to a series of apparently 
quite conclusive experiments made by other bacteriologists, Ogata and 
Jasuhara, who maintained not only that they had discovered an antidote 
to anthrax and mouse septicaemia, but that they could isolate it from the 
blood. It was therefore a ferment, and a ferment that was capable of 
annihilating the bacteria of anthrax and of mouse septicaemia, and of 
preventing the development of cholera and typhoid bacilli. 
The author having rendered two dogs and four rabbits immune, the 
latter by the method of Roux and Chamberland, and having extracted 
their blood and body-juices by pressure, injected some of these fluids 
into animals — rabbits, mice, and guinea-pigs — and these were thereupon 
inoculated with anthrax. On one occasion an animal thus treated lived 
about three hours longer than the control animal, but all the rest of the 
results were quite negative. The ill-success of the author gives him 
opportunity for suggesting that the Japanese dogs are possessed of more 
or of a diflerent kind of immunity. 
Bacteria in the Dairy.f — Prof. H. W. Conn deals first of all with 
the process of creaming and the separation of a coagulable substance 
analogous to the fibrin of blood which takes place a short time after 
milking. The author then passes on to the ripening of cream, which 
precedes the formation of butter, and which may be considered as a spon- 
taneous fermentation imparting to butter its agreeable aromatic flavour. 
According to Storch and Weigmann, this process is brought about 
by certain kinds of bacteria, and can therefore be artificially set up in 
pasteurized cream by means of pure cultivations. 
From bacteriological investigations carried out to ascertain the part 
played by bacteria in this process, the author found that these were 
* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., x. (1891) pp. 151-7. 
t Third Annual Report of the Storr’s School Agricultural Experimental Station, 
1891. See Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., x. (1891) pp. 252-3. 
