274 BACTERIA IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 



London. In a letter accompanying this, Burdon- 

 Sanderson says: "I send you the material I 

 started from in the last experiments I made upon 

 the subject (anthrax). It was then five years 

 old, and consequently is now seven or eight. I 

 have no doubt that you will find that if worked 

 up with salt-solution and injected into a mouse, 

 you will have the spleen after from twenty-four 

 to thirty-six hours enlarged and infiltrated with 

 Bacillus." This scientific prediction was fulfilled 

 to the letter. The little tube only contained a 

 fraction of a grain of dried blood. This was 

 rubbed up with a little salt-solution in accordance 

 with the directions given, and a few minims of 

 the solution injected beneath the skin of a re- 

 cently-captured mouse. The animal died in a 

 little less than thirty-six hours, and its liver and 

 spleen contained an abundance of bacilli, which 

 are shown in my photo-micrographs (Figs. 1 and 

 2, Plate XL). 



A portion of the spleen of this animal was 

 placed in a culture-cell with a little chicken loidl- 

 lon, and kept for twenty-four hours in the cul- 

 ture-oven, at a temperature of 100 Fahr. The 

 following day the culture-fluid was found to con- 

 tain a luxuriant growth of filaments, many of 

 which contained shining oval spores (see Fig. 3, 

 Plate XL). A fragment of the spleen of the 

 mouse was used to inoculate a small quantity of 

 blood from a healthy rabbit, drawn directly into a 

 sterilized tube. The anthrax bacillus multiplied 



