REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 53 



a bouillon culture of glanders which became clouded in two or three 

 days after inoculation. 



Glanders bacilli change their form more or less in cultures as the 

 latter grow older. This is without doubt a degenerative process, 

 and the changed bacilli are dead or nearly so. True rod forms are 

 seen in sections of tissues and in very young cultures only. In older 

 cultures they no longer appear as true rods, but the change of form 

 is not easily made out, owing to the minuteness of the objects under 

 examination. A frequent form is that of an oval and even a coccus, 

 in which the stained area is limited to one side or frequently to the 

 two poles, leaving an intervening clear space, which has been de- 

 scribed by some observers as a spore. It has no refractive power, 

 however, and can only be considered an empty space in the interior 

 of the bacillus. Other degenerative or involution forms, giving 

 rise to the appearance of a chain of cocci, are now and then observed. 

 It must not, therefore, be inferred that cultures of glanders bacilli are 

 necessarily impure when very few slender rod forms are met with. 



DIAGNOSIS OF GLANDERS. 



The foregoing brief description of glanders bacilli and of their cult- 

 ures is of great service in diagnosis. Cultures made from the spleen 

 or liver tubercles of slaughtered horses, exhibiting the characters al- 

 ready described, would prove beyond a doubt that the animals had 

 been affected with glanders. But veterinarians in most cases are able 

 to make a diagnosis on post-mortem examination without the aid of 

 cultures. The question to-day is whether glanders can be positively 

 diagnosed in the living animal, especially when the gross appearances 

 of glanders are obscure and the animal is a valuable one. 



If cultures of the specific bacilli could be obtained directly from 

 the living animal the problem would be very simple. Those accessi- 

 ble organs or parts of the horse which may be the seat of disease are 

 the nasal passages, the subniaxillary glands, and the skin or subcu- 

 taneous tissue. Frequently only one of these parts is involved. But 

 it is impossible to make cultures from the nasal ulcers or discharges 

 because they contain, besides the specific bacilli, many other bacteria. 

 In tubes inoculated from such material a single day would suffice 

 for the rapid multiplication of the other bacteria so as to entirely 

 crowd out or bury up any glanders bacilli that may have been pres- 

 ent, as the former grow many times more rapidly. When nodules 

 are present under the skin it is highly improbable that the bacilli 

 can be obtained therefrom in pure cultures during the life of the 

 animal, owing to .the danger of contaminating the cultures. When 

 the nodules have once broken down into ulcers numerous other bac- 

 teria lodge in them, and cultures are then out of the question. It 

 has been suggested recently that the enlarged subniaxillary glands 

 be removed and examined for glanders bacilli. Thus far we do not 

 know in what numbers they are present in these enlarged glands, 

 and it would require considerable preliminary study to determine 

 whether cultures are successful when made from them. * 



The direct determination of glanders by means of microscopic ex>- 

 animation and cultivation is thus far not feasible. 



The question might be asked, Why not isolate the glanders bacilli 

 from the impure discharge from the nose, or from ulcerated farcy 

 buds, as we should do in searching for the comma bacillus in the 



* See the end of this chapter with reference to this point. 



