25O BACTERIA. 



numbers ; they are seen in the internal sheath of the hair, 

 from which they may, in some few cases, pass through the 

 epithelium, and so to the surface ; this is, however, a very 

 rare condition. As a rule, leprosy bacilli are not met with 

 in the blood ; but in the febrile condition that occurs shortly 

 before death, bacilli have been described as being found in 

 the circulating blood taken at some distance from any nodule. 

 As the leprosy nodules may be found in all parts of the 

 body so also may the bacilli. In cases of anaesthetic leprosy 

 the bacilli may usually be readily demonstrated lying in the 

 dilated lymphatics of the thickened and nodulated nerves. 

 Here, too, as in tubercle, the lymphatic glands are distinctly 

 infiltrated. From its resemblance to tubercle, and from the 

 fact that its specific bacillus is found so constantly associated 

 with the disease, being most numerous in those positions 

 in which the leprous processes are most advanced, but being 

 present from the very commencement of the tubercle forma- 

 tion, it is evident that the bacillus bears a constant probably 

 a causal relation to the disease, and it was therefore supposed 

 that leprosy might be carried from one individual to another 

 through its agency ; that, in fact, the disease was a specific 

 infective disease and was inoculable. 



Numerous experiments, made with the object of proving 

 this thesis, have, however, failed. (Babes and Klarindero 

 mention, in support of the contagious nature of the disease, 

 the case of a child that developed leprosy on the lips and 

 cheeks during the time that it was being suckled by a 

 leprous mother, and Dr. Castor and many others insist on 

 the communicability of the disease. A patient has recently 

 been reported to be dying from leprosy, the result of inocu- 

 lation in 1884. The patient was a condemned criminal in 

 Honolulu, who elected to be inoculated with leprosy by Dr. 

 Arning in place of being hanged). Even the inoculation of 

 fragments of leprous tissue gave rise in all recorded experi- 

 ments to no true leprosy, unless the patients were already the 

 subjects of the disease. The cultivation of the bacillus has 

 also proved to be a most difficult matter. Neisser observed 

 a number of small pellicles that appeared to shoot out from 

 small particles of tissue introduced into consolidated blood 

 serum, kept at a temperature of between 37 C. and 38 C. 

 Bordoni Uffreduzzi obtained growths from the marrow of 

 a bone in which there were a number of free leprosy bacilli ; 



