TO DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 395 
those due to the operation : the animals ate food and appeared 
comfortable in half an hour ; faeces quite natural. 
Now, it is important to note, that in those experiments 
where considerable quantities of fresh cholera-blood have been 
used by injection into the veins, care has always been taken 
to remove the fibrinefrom it. In this way, the injury kno-wn 
to result from the introduction of pure human blood into 
animals of a different organisation was avoided ; for, as 
Bischoff has shown, this mischief is almost wholly due to tb^ 
fibrine in the blood. In M. Loir’s experiments only, if blood 
had not previously been removed from the animal, was the 
quantity large enough of itself to cause injury in the way 
pointed out by Dr. Blundell and others. Nevertheless, freed 
from these objections, as well as from those which belong to 
experiments made with blood taken after death, the results of 
inoculation with fresh cholera-blood are not very decided. We 
can scarcely feel surprised that in the accidental inoculation 
experiments on the human person mentioned above, and in the 
self-inoculations of M. Foy and his coadjutors, no result fol- 
lowed, and we confess that the importance attached to such ne- 
gative results by Schmidt, seems to us much exaggerated : for 
a quantity of poison may exist in the entire blood, capable of 
killing, and then of transmitting a disease, and yet be inope- 
rative in such small proportion as would be contained in a 
few drops of that fluid. The negative results of Eichstedt, 
Calderini, and Namias, may be due to similar defects as to 
quantity. Even to larger doses Schmidt denies any influ- 
ence; but what are S\ drachms (the quantity employed), or 
even 10 drachms, out of a total quantity of several pounds of 
blood. In M. Loir’s experiment only was the quantity em- 
ployed (8 ounces) large enough to avoid this source of fallacy ; 
and in it, as w ell as in some of our ow n observations, cholera- 
like symptoms w^ere produced by the injection of fresh cholera- 
blood. But even in these they are not sufficiently charac- 
teristic to prove the positive communication of the disease, for 
the symptoms may be referable to physical or chemical altera- 
tions in living cholera-blood, and not to the presence of a con- 
tagious zymotic substance, or true cholera agent. At the same 
time, we are disposed to agree with Dr. Meyer that it by no 
means follows, that a specific agent may not at some period 
or other, and especially at the beginning of the disease, exist 
in the blood. Hence, as indeed is also suggested by Dr. Meyer 
(who, we may remark, appears to be a decided contagionist) fur- 
ther inquiries are undoubtedly needed, on a greater variety and 
number of animals, to avoid the accidents of idiosyncratic or 
generic insusceptibility, and with larger quantities of blood, 
taken from a variety of patients, and especially at the very 
