50 REPORT OF THE BUREAU OP ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 



strong opposition to those who held glanders to be a communicable 

 disease, which opposition was not overcome until about thirty years 

 ago. 



Various efforts had been made in the last forty years to discover the 

 actual cause of the disease, either in the blood or th.e affected animal 

 or in the specific lesions of the air passages and the sldn. The alleged 

 discoveries in most cases were far from the truth, and at times sen- 

 sational and absurd. Thus Hallier, in 1868, claimed to have found 

 the same organism in glanders which he regarded as the cause of 

 syphilis in man. The doctrine that syphilis originated in glanders 

 had been promulgated, before this, and was now seemingly confirmed 

 by Hallier's fantastic inferences. In 1882 Roszahegyi described or- 

 ganisms which he found in the pustules of a man who had succumbed 

 to acute glanders. His description warrants the belief that he was 

 the first to see the bacilli of glanders. He did not go far enough, 

 however, and failed to show any causal relation between these organ- 

 isms and the disease. In 1882, Loffler and Schlitz published the 

 first positive results obtained in isolating the bacillus of glanders, 

 which have been confirmed by a number of observers subsequently. 

 Meanwhile work had been going on in France in the same direction. 

 Bouchard, Capitan, and Charrin published in 1883 the results of 

 cultivation and inoculation experiments dating back to 1881, which 

 they claimed as decisive in demonstrating the microbe of the disease. 

 A careful perusal of Bouley's note to the Academy of Medicine in 

 1883 (Bull. Acad. Medecine, 1883, p. 1239) will, however, convince 

 any unbiased reader that the methods which they employed (in one 

 case they made cultures from a nasal ulcer in bouillon," in another 

 from a' spleen tubercle in bouillon) are either unsafe or insufficient 

 in bringing about any positive results as to the true nature of the 

 specific microbe. We must therefore accord to Loffler and Schiitz 

 the credit of being the first to have demonstrated in a satisfactory 

 manner the presence of a certain microbe in glandered horses and its 

 capacity of producing the disease in healthy horses. A brief resume 

 of their work* will serve at the same time as a description of the ba- 

 cillus as they found it in the lesions and in cultures, and as an intro- 

 duction to the work done on the same subject in the laboratory of the 

 Bureau. 



The authors found considerable difficulty in demonstrating the 

 presence of glanders bacilli in sections of nodules in the spleen and 

 liver of glandered horses, owing to the fact that most of the staining 

 agents failed to color them. Finally, the following solution was 

 made, which now goes under the name of Loffler's stain: 30 cubic 

 centimeters of a concentrated alcoholic solution of methylene blue 

 was added to 100 cubic centimeters of .01 per cent, potassium hydrate. 

 When sections were placed in this deep-blue liquid for about 5 

 minutes, transferred to a 1 per cent, solution of acetic acid for a few 

 seconds, then dehydrated in alcohol and cleared in cedar oil, very 

 delicate bacilli could be detected now and then, especially near the 

 periphery of young nodules. As a rule they were very rare, but no 

 other organisms were found. 



Loffler recommends for the study of the bacilli of glanders, both on 

 cover-glass preparations and in sections, very recent nodules from the 

 lungs of inoculated guinea pigs, as the bacilli are quite numerous in 



* The full publication of their experiments will be formcl in Arbeiten a. d. Kaiser- 

 lichen Gesundheitsamte. Berlin, 1886, I, p. 131, and their preliminary report trans- 

 lated in volume 95 of the New Sydenham Society, 1886. 



