EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY. 
149 
cillus can kill in fifty days, and have no lesions, while these 
may prove fatal in five days. This explains how a bacillus, 
which may easily be cultivated or colored, may be for some 
time overlooked, when regarded only from the point of view 
of the genesis of tuberculosis. In future, when the inocula¬ 
tion of a microbe obtained from a tubercle fails in its antici¬ 
pated results in an animal of the same species, it will become 
necessary, before deciding on the qualities of the microbe, to 
test it by using it in the inoculation of one or more animals of 
other species and under different conditions of evolution.— 
Ibid . 
UPON THE ETIOLOGY OF TETANUS. 
By Chantemesse and Widal. 
With a view to the experimental elucidation of the ques¬ 
tion of the endemic outbreaks occurring at times in hospi¬ 
tals, the authors inoculated guinea pigs with the dust of walls, 
curtains, bedding, floors, and other surroundings of the beds 
in which tetanic patients had died. Those in which the dust 
of walls, curtains and bedding were used have remained neg¬ 
ative, while those made with the dust of the fissures of the 
floor have always produced tetatus on from the third to the 
fifth day. Similar results have been obtained with the scrap¬ 
ings of the internal surface of the uterus of a patient who had 
died of tetanus. Inoculations made with the organs of ani¬ 
mals killed in these experiments, have also been negative ; and 
those made with the fluid taken from the edges of the wounds 
were positive ; but in reproducing the disease in series, it was 
observed that the inoculations become sterile towards the 
fourth or the fifth series. 
The pus and serosity of the wounds contained, with others, 
the microbe of Nicolaier, but in cultivating this microbe on 
plates of serum, the culture have never given positive inocu¬ 
lations. The authors explain these facts by stating that the 
microbe of Nicolaier does not act alone, but that it needs a 
specially prepared soil and the presence of certain other mi¬ 
crobes to become virulent; or that the culture in artificial 
media, while preserving its germinative faculty, has destroyed 
