14 
Y. DE Giaxa and B. Gosio (a) made experiments in a small chamber 
partially ventilated and lighted, having a temperature varjdng from 
10° to 18° C. 
Strips of different fabrics, linen or v^ool, were infected after steam 
sterilization, and then suspended free or in small cabinets protected 
from the atmospheric dust. Some of the material was placed on large 
pieces of the same fabrics arranged so as to simulate a package. 
The material of infection was deposited on the cloth either by rub- 
bing with fresh agar-agar culture, in which case small particles of agar in 
addition to the germs adhere to the texture, or by the direct application 
of pus or blood from plague-infected animals. 
The longest period of observation was thirty days ; at the end of that 
time germs of plague were obtained from the pieces of cloth. In the 
case of pieces of cloth impregnated with pus or blood the observation 
was for twenty- nine days. On these the germs developed either in the 
open air or on cloth folded and inclosed in a box to simulate clothing 
packed in a trunk. 
Pieces of linen thread were steeped in infected blood ana exposed to 
desiccation in an incubator at an air circulation of 36° to 39° C. 
After two, four, and five days several threads were placed in tubes of 
broth. Those exposed two days to desiccation developed slowly. Of 
those desiccated for four days, only 1 in 3 remained sterile ; all those 
exposed for five days remained sterile. 
Plague-iafected blood was spread on a rabbit’s skin and allowed to 
dry for four days. After fifteen days’ exposure to a temperature vary- 
ing from 12° to 16° C. (diffused light) the infected surface was scraped 
and the scrapings were cultivated. The plague bacillus soon developed. 
As regards pathogenic action, the germ exposed to desiccation almost 
always showed a decided slowness in killing the animal. 
EFFECT OF SUNLIGHT ON THE PLAGUE BACILLI. 
Albrecht and Bhon (h) exposed peritoneal exudate in a test tube (in 
August, in Vienna), to direct sunlight for six hours, and could not notice 
any marked difference in the organism. 
Abel (c) found that plague bacilli on cover glasses died after one hour 
exposure to sunlight at 30° C. (in Hamburg). Controls kept in the 
dark grew after six hours. Thicker spreads from agar cultures with- 
stood sunning at 30° C., three and one-half hours. 
Kitasato (d) found that the bacillus was killed at Hongkong in three 
to four hours’ sunning. He used pus from buboes. 
a Richerclie sul bacillo della peste bubbonica, etc., Annali d’ igiene sperimentale, 
1897, No. 7, page 261. 
h Die Peste, Muller and Pocb, page 61, Vienna, 1900. 
c Zur Kenntnis des Pestbacillus. Centralblatt fur Bakteriologie und Parasitenkunde, 
etc., Bd. XXI, 1897. 
d Preliminary notice of the bacillus of bubonic plague, Hongkong, 1894, July 7. 
