18 DR. E. KLEIN. 



gelatine pork, which is to serve as stock for the cultivations. I 

 have used also other nourishing material, such as beef broth, 

 rabbit broth, &c., for the cultivation of various organisms; but 

 the subject of the present report is the observations made with 

 Bacillus anthracis, and for this I have used, hitherto with 

 satisfactory results, the pork broth and gelatine pork only, and 

 I shall not enter on the present occasion into a consideration 

 of the other nourishing materials. 



I now come to the description of the method of using the 

 above stock of nourishing material for the special cultivations 

 of the Bacillus anthracis. 



(A.) A number of disinfected test-tubes and small flasks are 

 used, the latter of the capacity of an ounce or so, plugged with 

 disinfected cotton wool, the plug lifted, and each charged as 

 rapidly as possible for a fraction of their volume with the 

 nourishing material from the stock flask, and then plugged with 

 cotton wool. In the case of the gelatine pork, this is of course 

 first liquefied over the flame. The stock flask, if not emptied 

 by this process of charging, is subjected to boiling from five to 

 ten minutes. When charged and plugged each test-tube and 

 small flask is subjected to boiling for a few minutes ; the boil- 

 ing is efi'ected over a small flame in order to prevent the 

 over-boiling ; this is not so much to be feared in the case of the 

 flasks as in that of the test tubes. Thorough boiling for once 

 is generally sufficient to destroy every organism that may have 

 accidentally entered during the process of charging. Kept for 

 an indefinite time in the incubator at 32° — 35° C. the fluid in 

 them remains bright and clear. 



(B.) Glass cells of exactly the same nature as those that 

 were of so great use to me in my research on the pneumo- 

 enteritis of the pig (see these Reports for 1877, p. 210), in the 

 majority of instances without any addition, in some with the 

 addition of a thin glass tube cemented to the glass slide and 

 leading into the cell ; the outer opening of this glass tube is 

 plugged with cotton wool. This tube was chiefly added with 

 the view of facilitating the formation of spores, but as a rule I 

 found, coeteris paribus, if the other conditions for the spore 



