1014 RECORD OP CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



artificial growths of tlie anthrax-bacterium, full of bacteria and germs. 

 A small number of the sheep thus treated died, after a period of 

 incubation of the disease of from eight to ten days, with all the symp- 

 toms of anthrax ; many sheep escaped with no other hurt than 

 becoming decidedly unwell. The mortality increased when to the food 

 treated as above were added rough objects, such as points of dried 

 thistle-leaves, and especially the spines of barley-ears cut into minute 

 fragments. The appearances found in animals which die under these 

 conditions are exactly those of such as have died spontaneously of the 

 disease, and show that its effects commence in the mouth or the 

 pharynx. From these experiments it seems that the anthrax- 

 poisoned animals of the Eure-et-Loire district die under the effects 

 of spores taken in with their food. 



In spite of the opinion of M. Davaine, that an animal which has 

 died of anthrax cannot communicate the disease after putrefaction, 

 and that of M. Colin, that earth and water containing anthrax- 

 infected matters do not transmit the infection, it may be shown that 

 though during putrefaction the bacterium dies, its spores survive to 

 propagate infection. The difficulty of proving this fact is great, for 

 the relative amoimt of the organism dispersed among the particles of 

 soil is almost infinitesimal, and, when it has reached the soil, it there 

 meets with so many antagonistic agencies, in the form of other germs 

 which compete with it for existence, that it requires very careful 

 handling (e. g. cultivation in air or vacuum or with other changes of 

 medium and temperature) to bring the particular species to maturity 

 from the soil examined, even though it is there already. 



It is stated by the slaughterers that there is no danger in handling 

 the bodies of the diseased animals when putrefaction has begun, and 

 that there is no cause for apprehension when so doing after the 

 animal has become cold ; and MM. Pasteur and Joubert have shown 

 that when placed in a vacuum or in an atmosphere of carbonic acid, 

 the bacterium dies and breaks up into granules, while its spores live. 

 Now it appears probable that the bacteria of a diseased animal which 

 has been buried escape in abundance into the surrounding earth in 

 the blood which usually issues at death by the nostrils and the mouth, 

 and in the urine, and at a later stage in the liquids expelled by gaseous 

 inflation of the body ; probably not even in the latter case has decom- 

 position set in and destroyed the parasite. A proof of this view 

 is found in the fact that infected blood added to earth sprinkled with 

 yeast liquid or urine, and kept at the temperature which probably 

 exists around a decomposing animal, shows that a multiplication of its 

 bacteria and their resolution into germs takes place. A still more 

 practical proof is furnished by the case of a diseased sheep which 

 was buried as an experiment ; ten months afterwards the earth of the 

 grave furnished germs of the bacterium capable of causing the death 

 of fowls inoculated with them, and did the same four months later. 

 The graves of some diseased cows furnished anthrax-material during 

 and after an interval of two years since burial. Lastly, the bac- 

 teria have been detected in the earth above graves over which cul- 

 tivation has been carried on, and at those points of the field alone. 



