Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/651

Rh fluids containing the bacillus in question, and washings from malarious soils, were injected subcutaneously.

In my work on Malaria and Malarial Diseases, already referred to (published in 1884), I say:

"The importance of this alleged discovery induced the National Board of Health, soon after the publication of the first report published by Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli, to undertake control experiments in a recognized malarial locality in this country. The writer, who had established a laboratory in New Orleans for the purpose of studying the micro-organisms present in the atmosphere of that city, was therefore instructed to repeat the experiments of Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli, and during the autumn of 1880 devoted a considerable portion of his time to this investigation. The results obtained were not favorable to the view that the fever produced in rabbits by the injection beneath their skin of infusions of swamp mud, etc., was a truly malarial fever; and, for reasons stated, the conclusion was reached that the evidence offered by Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli in their first report, which alone had been published at this time, was unsatisfactory. (The full report of these investigations is given in Supplement No. 14, National Board of Health Bulletin, published in Washington, D. C., July 23, 1881.)"

Referring to subsequent observations, I remark:

"Since the publication of the report above referred to the belief that the Bacillus malariœ, is the true cause of malarial fevers has received considerable support from observations made in Rome, under the direction of Tommasi-Crudeli, by Marchiafava, Cuboni, Peroncito, Ceri, and others.

"We do not feel prepared to estimate the value of this evidence in detail, but will, in a general way, give our reasons for considering it in a spirit of scientific skepticism, and for demanding substantial confirmation from other parts of the world where malarial fevers prevail, and especially in our own country, where malaria is so well known by its effects, and where the Bacillus malariœ. should be easily found if it is constantly present in the blood during the cold stage of intermittents, as has been claimed by some of the Roman observers. . ..

"The writer's observations lead him to be very cautious in accepting evidence relating to the discovery of organisms in the blood, when these are few in number and require diligent search for their demonstration; for the possibilities of accidental contamination or of mistake in observation are very great. . ..

"The writer has many times examined carefully the blood of malarial-fever patients with a one-eighteenth-inch oil-immersion objective (of Zeiss), and has not been successful in finding either rods or spores. But few of these examinations have, however,