Arthur William Bacot was born in London on April 28th, 1866, the third son and fourth child of Edmund Alexander and Harriet Bacot.

In the preceding report (Topley and Ayrton, 1923 b) it has been shown that, if various strains of B. aertrycke be fed to mice and the subsequent events observed over a period of 42 days, and if all strains fed to the mice or isolated from their faeces or tissues be examined as regards their type of growth and their agglutination reactions, then the following associations are found to exist between the characters studied. The presence of group antigen is associated with persistent faecal excretion, whether the strain be rough or smooth. Roughness is associated with decreased faecal excretion and a decrease in the percentage mortality, when rough strains are compared with, smooth.

In the course of experiments on the cultivation of anaerobic bacilli, it was found advisable to be able to calculate with some certainty on the production of spores by the strains of anaerobes worked with. Observations were accordingly made of the conditions of cultivation by which sporulation appeared to be influenced. It was evident that in the case of B. sporogenes and other well-known types observed, the proportion of spores produced within a given period varied markedly in response to variations in the same factors that mainly influenced the rate of growth in cultures, viz. concentration of food material, incubation temperature, and reaction of medium. With the exception of cultures in media containing added carbohydrate, it was evidently also the rule that sporulation was most active in cultures commencing under conditions most favourable to rapidity of vegetation.

A number of methods have been described for anaerobic cultivation in separate plates. The principle offers certain advantages over the cultivation of a number of plates in the same anaerobic container, which has to be opened whenever it is desired to inspect any particular culture; and it is useful where anaerobic plate cultures are needed only occasionally or in small numbers.

Towards the end of May, 1923, we received information of two fatal cases of bubonic plague in man, one near Yakoshih (a village on the Chinese Eastern Railway, 168 miles east of Manchouli), and the other at Haranor (in Transbaikalia, 52 miles west of Manchouli); both victims were Russians who had hunted tarbagans and afterwards developed axillary buboes.

1. Certain cross-immunisation experiments (on monkeys) with B. abortus and B. melitensis carried out in 1921 were repeated with the same effective result.

2. It was found that goats vaccinated intravenously with B. abortus in massive doses are protected from subsequent infection with a virulent B. melitensis strain, and fail to pass that organism in the milk.

3. The record of the effect of B. abortus vaccine in treating three cases of undulant fever is given.

In conclusion I wish to express my thanks and gratitude to the staff of the Lister Institute for the hospitality of the laboratories and for many valuable criticisms.

In January, 1923, a small outbreak of dysentery occurred amongst the nursing staff of a certain institution. In all there were six cases. Only one case, the first which occurred, showed symptoms of any great severity. In the remaining five cases the symptoms were slight, and the patients were able to return to duty m seven or eight days from the commencement of the illness.

In a paper on Bacillus coli infections of the urinary tract, Dudgeon, Wordley and Bawtree (1922) refer to two cases of acute pyelo-cystitis, one of which terminated fatally, due to slow lactose fermenting bacilli which were strongly haemolytic. The diagnosis of paratyphoid fever was considered probable on clinical evidence, chiefly because of the severity of the illness and the prolonged pyrexia which was infinitely longer than occurs in typical cases of acute coli fever. An organism was isolated from each case with identical cultural, serological, and haemolytic properties. On cultural evidence both strains were distinct from true colon bacilli, as they formed blue colonies on litmus-lactose-agar which were similar in appearance to typhoid-paratyphoid colonies, and slowly fermented lactose-broth.

Pathologists and physiologists are agreed that the capillary endothelium is of high importance in the animal economy, though it is admitted that its functions are involved in much obscurity. With the immunologist, the primary difficulty is lack of physiological data which would enable him to start with the normal functions and to interpret abnormalities in the light of these. And it is obviously far from easy to plan experiments providing the sort of information the immunologist wants about the functions of endothelium as part of a living mechanism, in which parenchymatous cells, body fluids, and endothelial channels jointly participate.