432 M. ARMAND EUFFER. 



laden with spores^ and wrapped in a little piece of sterilised 

 cotton-wool, another similar thread being placed on the cotton- 

 wool without being surrounded by the latter. Nineteen hours 

 afterwards a semi-transparent liquid exudation had gathered 

 round the threads, and a few short but normal bacilli could be 

 distinguished in it. The thread lying in the cotton-wool was 

 surrounded by far more anthrax bacilli than its fellow outside 

 thread. These prove, then, that anthrax bacilli find a medium 

 favorable to their growth even in animals rendered immune by 

 previous inoculations, and that they grow best when protected 

 against the attacks of amoeboid cells. Further, bacilli of the first 

 vaccin may develop in the organism of rats which have resisted 

 virulent anthrax — in the anterior chamber of the eye of a white 

 rat one month and a half after its recovery from virulent 

 anthrax, for instance. 



Some of the leucocytes of white rats inoculated with anthrax 

 contain no, or very few, bacilli ; whilst others devour them in 

 such numbers that it is often difficult to distinguish individual 

 bacilli. These greedy phagocytes are with but few exceptions 

 multinucleated raicrophages. The bacilli contained in these 

 cells often stain easily, and appear normal ; but, on the other 

 hand, more or less degenerated micro-organisms are often met 

 with. 



When filled with bacilli phagocytes burst with extraordinary 

 facility, and in every field the observer meets with cells which 

 have allowed part of their contents to escape. The presence 

 of free and degenerated bacilli in the exudation of white rats 

 inoculated with anthrax, which at once strikes the observer, 

 can thus be readily explained. MetschnikofF, however, does 

 not think that all the bacilli found dead outside the cells come 

 without exception from the interior of phagocytes, for, in the 

 most favorable cultivating media even, a certain number of 

 microbes die, either as a result of the sudden transportation 

 into a new ground, or from some similar cause. 



During the first two days immediately following the inocula- 

 tion of anthrax into the anterior chamber of the eye of white 

 rats the larger number of the bacilli are found outside the cells ; 



