MORBID ANATOMY. 211 



place. In from eighteen to twenty-four hours at this same 

 temperature spores will be noticed. If the temperature be 

 lower the development of spores will be retarded ; and if above 

 47° C. to 40° C, all apparent developmental changes are said 

 to cease. On the advent of putrefaction in the tissue, the 

 bacilli are noticed to be motionless, disappear, and the blood 

 becomes inert in the production of anthrax. Deprived of air, 

 they soon become inactive : and their, development is said to 

 depend on the presence of oxygen, while bacterium termo 

 under the same conditions loses its activity. 



We are certainly as yet not satisfactorily informed respecting 

 the behaviour of these bacterial forms when in the body, or 

 their exact relation to many abnormal conditions during the 

 progress of which we find these organisms in the blood. How- 

 ever, wdiether these be the direct cause or only the carriers of 

 the specific vu'us of the disease, or merely indicative of certain 

 peculiar altered conditions of the circulatory fluid, their 

 presence in the blood is undoubtedly intimately associated 

 in some way with the lesions and perverted functions observed, 

 and as such constitutes an important feature in their develop- 

 ment. 



In pursuing our investigations in this disease, we must not 

 lose sight of the knowledge that there are other bacteria which 

 are morphologically identical with bacillus anthracis, and thus 

 can be distinguished from it only by their effects on living 

 animals. It is on record that one, bacterium subtilis — the hay- 

 infusion bacterium, quite harmless in this state — may by culti- 

 vation in the animal body acquire the property of being 

 capable of producing anthrax ; while we must notice that in 

 bacillus, attenuated for protective inoculation purposes, re- 

 crudescence may be effected by repeated cultivation in a series 

 of animals of a species susceptible to anthrax. 



Special Necroscopic Appearance in the Horse. — In the non- 

 localized forms of anthrax of the horse, the special lesions and 

 changes observable after death are in no way different from 

 the appearances we have now attempted to sketch. In addi- 

 tion to the marked changes and characteristic alterations of 

 the great glandular structures and organs of the abdomen and 

 thorax, we observe there is probably a more evenly distributed 

 condition of infiltration of the connective-tissue of the body, 



14—2 



