Medical Officers of the Army of India.
Hospital presented certain constant distinctive peculiarities, as compared
with precisely similarly treated cultivations of the Commas obtained from cases in the
General Hospital; and, attention having once been directed to the subject, and
special experiments in regard to it instituted, it very soon became evident that at
least two distinct species of Choleraic Comma-Bacilli were present. The specific
distinctness of the Commas, derived from the cases simultaneously present in the
Sealdah Pauper Hospital was not so readily or quickly detected, owing to t h e i r
presenting certain features resembling those of the Commas derived from the
Medical College Hospital, but, as the result of closer investigation, it also became
quite evident.
At the beginning of the year 1890, then, three of the principal hospitals in
Calcutta contained cases of cholera, not differing from one another in symptoms
or mortality, and all alike being characterised by the presence of abundance of
cultivable Comma-Bacilli in the intestinal contents, but these not of one, but of
three distinct species—one species being present in the materials derived from
the General Hospital; a second in those from the Medical College Hospital; and
a third in those from the Sealdah Pauper Hospital. Presently a lull occurred in
the prevalence of the disease, so that an interval of some weeks elapsed ere any
fresh materials were obtained. Subsequent to this, the first case serving as a
source of supply was one in the General Hospital, and in regard to it the characters
of the only kind of Comma-Bacilli present in the discharges were so very mani-
festly different from those of the species which had been previously obtained as
to render it at once manifest that a fourth species was being dealt with. The
case was so far remarkable, because, as is exceptionally the case, it originated
within the hospital itself, at a time when no cases of extrinsic origin were present
in it. A pause now again occurred, and then two fresh cases presented themselves
at short intervals, one originating in the harbour and admitted into the General
Hospital, and the other again originating within the hospital itself. The Comma-
Bacilli which were present in connection with the latter case, appeared unequivo-
cally to be of the same species as that characterising the cases in the same hospital
in the beginning of the year, but those related to the former presented certain
constant peculiarities of a nature indicating the presence of a fifth species. The
next case was one which was admitted into the Medical College Hospital in the
latter, part of June, and the discharges here contained no less than three addi-
tional distinct species.
As is normally the case, a subsidence in the prevalence of cholera occurred
during the rains, succeeded by a recrudescence in the early part of the cold
weather, and at this time the materials from three new cases were submitted to
special investigation. The first of these was admitted into the General Hospital
on the 17th of November, and furnished Commas of the same species as those
prevalent in similarly situated cases at the beginning of the year, whilst the two
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