xvii.] SEPTIC AND PATHOGENIC ORGANISMS. 219 



A rabbit was inoculated with a culture of bacillus an- 

 thracis which I did not expect would produce anthrax. The 

 animal remained unaffected with anthrax, but died after 

 four weeks with the symptoms of extremely well-marked 

 tuberculosis in fact, the best marked case that I have seen 

 of both lungs, spleen, liver, and kidney. The tubercular 

 deposits contained the tubercle bacilli. 



Also in this instance inoculations with tuberculous matter 

 had been going on at the same time, when I meant to have 

 inoculated nothing else but a culture of anthrax bacilli. 



I think all these facts taken together prove unmistakably 

 that working with two contagia in the same laboratory and at 

 the same period, accidental contamination is of no rare 

 occurrence. And this applies with equal force to Buchner's 

 experiments. Buchner worked extensively with anthrax 

 cultures in the same laboratory, and at the same time he had 

 those successful cases of anthrax in mice which he thought 

 to have inoculated with cultures of hay bacillus, and acci- 

 dental contamination probably was the result. Buchner 

 himself has experimentally shown that anthrax virus in the 

 shape of spores can by inhalation produce anthrax, and, there- 

 fore, this is another argument against his above cases of 

 positive results. I am. assuming that his cultures of hay 

 bacillus were really free of spores of bacillus anthracis : but, 

 seeing that his anthrax cultures were probably contaminated 

 with hay bacillus, I do not see why, by some chance, one of 

 his tubes which he thought he inoculated with hay bacillus 

 should not have been accidentally contaminated with the 

 spores of bacillus anthracis, of which there must have been 

 many about in the air of the laboratory. 



If Buchner could show us that in a laboratory, in which 

 for some considerable time anthrax cultures, anthrax 

 animals, and examinations of anthrax bacilli had not been 



