an hour or even less often sufficed; and it never happened that the bacilli retained vitality after a deprivation lasting twenty-four hours.  These results would seem to point to the fact that the comma bacillus does not, like the organisms of anthrax and vaccinia, pass into the resting state (Daner-zustande) by drying; and if so, it is one of the most important facts in the etiology of cholera.  Much, however, remains to be done, especially with regard to the soiled linen of cholera patients being kept in a damp state.  He found that in soiled articles, when dried for a time, varying from twenty-four hours and upward, the comma bacilli were quite destroyed.  Nor was the destruction delayed by placing choleraic excreta in or upon earth, dry or moist, or mixed with stagnant water.  In gelatine cultures the comma bacilli can be cultivated for six weeks, and also in blood serum, milk, and potato, where anthrax bacilli rapidly form spores.  But a resting state of the comma bacilli has never been met with—­a very exceptional thing in the case of bacilli, and another reason why the organism must be regarded rather as a spirillum than a bacillus, for the spirilla require only a fluid medium, and do not, like the anthrax bacilli, thrive in a dry state.  It is quite unlikely that a resting state of the comma bacillus will ever be discovered; and, moreover, its absence harmonizes with our knowledge of cholera etiology.—­The Lancet.

* * * * *

[THE MEDICAL RECORD.]

MALARIA.—­THE NATURAL PRODUCTION OF MALARIA, AND THE MEANS OF MAKING MALARIAL COUNTRIES HEALTHIER.

[Footnote:  An Address delivered at the Eighth Session of the International Medical Congress, Copenhagen, August 12, 1884.]

By Conrad Tommasi Crudeli, M.D., Professor of Hygiene, University of Rome, Italy.

Before entering upon my subject, I must crave the indulgence of those of my colleagues whose language I have borrowed for any italicisms that I may use, as well as for the foreign accent which must strike their ears more or less disagreeably.  Desiring to respond as well as lay in my power to the invitation with which I have been honored to discuss the hygienic questions relating to malaria, I have chosen the French language as being the one in which, apart from my mother tongue, I could express myself with the greatest ease and precision.

I shall be pardoned also, I hope, for having employed the terms “malaria” and “malarial districts” in place of the more commonly used expressions “paludal miasm” (miasme paludeen) and “marshy regions” (contrees marecageuses).  The substitution is not a happy one from a literary point of view, but I have made it deliberately and for the following reason:  The idea that intermittent and pernicious fevers are engendered by putrid emanations from swamps and marshes is one of those semi-scientific assumptions which