5

Medical Officers of the Army of India.

not truly spirillar, the constituent elements really lying in one plane and
the filaments having no tendency to assume a spiral arrangement, but consist-
ing merely of a series of commas adhering to one another by their extremities
in simple linear order. The character of such filaments varies according
as the constituent commas present their convex and concave outlines throughout
to the same sides of the filament, or as they are disposed, so that an alter-
nation in the direction of their outlines is present, the convex and concave
contours of adjacent commas being directed to opposite sides. The outline
of the filaments in the first case presents a series of crescents with intervening
depressions and prominent points running along the one side, and rounded
elevations and angular inter-spaces on the other. In the second case the
filament is alike on both sides and simply undulate. Whatever be the variation
in detail, however, such filaments agree in their non-spiral character.

     So rarely does a truly spiral arrangement appear to be that I have only
on one occasion met with unequivocal evidence of its presence. This was in the
cultivation of materials which were derived from a case of cholera which was
admitted into the Medical College Hospital, Calcutta, in the month of January.
A primary plate-cultivation from it furnished no colonies of typical commas
alone, but many which, while containing a certain proportion of isolated
commas, were composed in greater part of peculiar filaments, many of which at
one or other point in their course assumed a truly spiral character. Others
were merely undulate and many S-shaped bodies were also present. In
those specimens in which true spirals were present the filaments throughout the
greater part of their length were merely undulate and in some cases almost
straight, and it was only here and there at isolated points that abrupt spirals of
from one to three turns were present. The numbers of such filaments were
very large as compared with those of the other forms present in the colonies.
In certain filaments, in place of actual spirals, sudden deep curvatures were
present, the curved portions being considerably thicker than the rest of the
filaments and closely resembling the larger varieties of curved Schizomycetes
occurring so abundantly in the intestinal contents of healthy guinea-pigs.
The protoplasmic contents of the curved portions were often distinctly vacuo-
late. Attempts at the continued propagation of this peculiar variety of
choleraic commas failed, as even in secondary cultivations true spirals were
entirely absent and filamentous forms of any kind rare, while in tertiary ones the
colonies consisted of typical commas alone.

III.—On the occurrence of Schizomycetes in the peritoneal secretion
of cases of Cholera.

     After it had been ascertained that in certain cases of subcutaneous injec-
tion of choleraic comma-bacilli in guinea-pigs a very excessive multiplication of