276 BACTEEIA IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 



presents, at the first glance, an appearance as if a blue 

 coloring matter had been injected into the vessels. 

 Each intestinal villus is permeated by an exceedingly 

 delicate blue net- work ; in the mucous membrane of 

 the stomach all the capillary net- work surrounding the 

 gastric glands is stained blue ; in the ciliary processes 

 each projection is injected, and a spiral vessel stained of 

 a dark blue color leads from thence to the iris, and 

 breaks up into a fine blue net-work with loops directed 

 towards the edge of the iris. The liver and lungs, and 

 the glandular structures, such as the pancreas and sali- 

 vary glands, are completely permeated by the same 

 blue capillary net-work. Indeed there is no organ 

 which is not more or less injected with the blue mass. 

 It is, however, very striking that this injection is only 

 present in the capillary vessels. All the larger vessels, 

 even the arteries and veins of an intestinal villus, are 

 either not stained at all or have but a light blue streak 

 in their interior, and that only here and there. When 

 magnified 250 times one can see that the blue capillary 

 net-work is composed of numerous delicate rods, and 

 when a power of 700 diameters is used, it is found that 

 the apparent injection is nothing more or less than the 

 Bacillus anthraciS) stained dark blue, and present in in- 

 credible numbers in the whole capillary system. In the 

 other vessels, especially in the larger ones, often only a 

 single bacillus may be met with at long intervals, or 

 they may bs quite absent. Here, therefore, we have a 

 striking proof of how little value are conclusions drawn 

 in traumatic infective diseases from the examination of 

 a drop of blood taken from a blood-vessel by chance ; 

 for one might well take a drop of blood from the heart 

 and find no micro-organisms in it, or one might readily 

 overlook the few which might be present, and that 

 although the capillary system abounds in these." 



