600 
SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
infections “ must always occur through the mucous membranes 
of the intestines : even when the poison seems to have been in¬ 
haled.” He thinks it is caught on the mucous membranes of 
the pharynx, swallowed, carried through the stomach and thus 
brought into contact with the intestine. From this point it 
enters the circulation and invades the lungs and other organs. 
Heaving these organisms, let us briefly observe the action of 
the tubercle bacillus. This seems very reluctant to grow where 
it can be scrutinized at will by students. It is evidently too 
Uiodest and retiring. It requires a specially prepared medium 
of blood serum or glycerine agar, and will not grow satisfac¬ 
torily on the common bouillon, agar-agar or gelatine. It pre¬ 
fers blood serum, probably because this contains some element 
favorable to its growth, which the others lack. 
Until very recently it has not been discovered, leading a 
saprophytic existence, but the claim is now made by a scientific 
searcher living in southern France that he has discovered this 
bacillus living on some of the coarse swamp grasses growing 
near his home. We will, however, await with interest further 
developments of this discovery. 
Its growth in the laboratory, even upon its preferred medium 
and under the most favorable conditions known, is so very slow 
that unless the culture is strictly pure the differing organisms 
at once outgrow and destroy the specimens sought. For this 
reason several careful transplantings are advisable. This manner 
of growth is still characteristic of them after they have obtained 
a lodgment in one of the higher animals. The progress of the 
disease is insidious, slow and evasive and much time is required 
for a colony of them to become sufficiently scattered about as 
separate spots of death to cause their presence to be indicated 
by their host. Their action upon the tissues is purely toxic. 
It has been suggested that some scrofulous conditions in the 
human subject may be due to a mixed infection, cocci having 
been inoculated with the tubercle bacilli. I would offer as a 
suggestion to those who may be in a position to experiment 
that possibly a method of curing recently established cases of 
tuberculosis might be found by making use of the troublous ex¬ 
periences of the laboratory worker and allowing some rapidly 
growing and at the same time less destructive organism to over¬ 
grow and destroy the bacilli within the living body. The fact 
that the introduction of certain forms of bacteria into a system 
previously infected with other forms will kill one or both is well 
proven. Green, in his “ Pathology,” says : u Recent experiments 
