MICROPHYTES FOUND IN THE BLOOD. 379 



It would seem that like organisms were discovered by Leisering 

 soiYie eighteen years ago, in apparently the same affection of the 

 pig as that now described by Dr. Klein. 



Dr. Falke, in referring to the bacilli of splenic fever, and after 

 alluding to the circumstance that Delafond had been able to 

 induce the disease in other animals by inoculating them with 

 a^'oth of a drop of bacillus-blood, states that Leisering, in his 

 * J3resden Report' for 1860, mentions that it is quite correct that 

 such bacilli are found in the blood in splenic disease, but that he 

 (Leisering) had also found that they were present in four pigs 

 which had suffered from well-marked typhus (abdorainalis) with 

 ulcers in the intestines and swelled follicles.^ There is no indi- 

 cation here that the bacilli seen by Dr. Leisering in pig-typhoid 

 differed in appearance from those which he had seen in charbon ; 

 on the contrary, he seems to assume that they are identical, and 

 hence questions their being pathognomonic of the latter disease. 



Seven cultivation-experiments were conducted by Dr. Klein of 

 the bacilli observed by him " to prove that the virus can be 

 cultivated artificially, i. e. outside the body of the animal." 

 Minute portions of peritoneal exudation were added to aqueous 

 humour on a glass side in the usual manner and kept at tempera- 

 tures ranging from 3'2° to 39° C. for a day or two ; then a portion 

 of the cultivated substance was transferred to a second slide with 

 fresh aqueous humour, and so on till from a third to an eighth 

 generation was reached. With material thus obtained seven 

 animals were inoculated at different stages of the cultivations. 

 All the animals are described as having been affected, but it 

 would appear that death did not result. Doubtless further 

 information as to the symptoms, &c., manifested by the inoculated 

 pigs will be furnished when full details of the experiments are 

 published. In the meantime, it may, however, be noted that it 

 is not mentioned that bacilli were found in the blood of the 

 inoculated animals. 



Dr. Klein states that the cultivated liquids proved, on micro- 

 scopic examination, to be " the seat of the growth and develop- 

 ment of a kind of bacterium which has all the characters of 

 Bacillus nubtilis (Cohn) " — a figure of which, copied from 



' " Bericht iiber die Thierarzneiwissenschaft," Schmidt's ' Jahrbiicher,' 

 Band IH, p. 131. Tlie origiual is as follows : " Leisering sagt im Dresd- 

 iier Bericht f. 1860, dass man nach den vorliegenden Beobachtuugen mit 

 llecht annehmen konne, dass im Milzbrandblute diese eigenthiimlicheu 

 Korpercheu stets vorkommen. Er babe jedoch dieselben auch bei vier 

 Schweinen gefunden, welche an ausgepragtem Typhus litten, der mit 

 Darmgeschwiiren, geschwelteu FoUikeln, b^assgraulicher Fiirbung der 

 Miiskleu und keiner BlutiiberfiUluug der Eingeweidc einherging." — Cited 

 by Professor Klob in his ' Pathologiscli-Anatomische Studien iiber das 

 Wesen des Cholera Processes,' Leipzig, 1867. 



