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SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY

MM. Peiffer and Emerich, carefully examined the secretions during this experiment.

M. Von Pettenkofer himself thus states the results:

'The comma bacilli not only prospered in my digestive tube, but had so multiplied in it, that it was evident they found a congenial soil. They were found there in quantities, and in a state of pure culture. But on October 14 all the secretions were normal, only containing a few isolated microbes, which had entirely disappeared on the 18th.

‘Now, most bacteriologists assert that the cholera bacilli ‘remaining in the intestines secrete there a poison, which, being absorbed, produces the cholera. But what a quantity of poison must have been secreted by these milliards of bacilli during the eight days' sojourn in my intestines! Yet I felt perfectly well, had an excellent appetite, felt neither indigestion nor fever, etc., and I attended every day to my usual occupations. Whence I conclude that the comma bacillus, though it ‘may cause a little diarrhœa, produces neither European nor Asiatic cholera.

'Now, it must not be imagined that I am the