CHAPTER X. 



GLANDERS. 



THE bacillus of glanders (bacillus mallei ; Fr., bacille de la 

 morve ; Ger., Rotzbadllus) was discovered by Loffler and 

 Schutz, the announcement of this discovery being made 

 towards the end of 1882. They not only obtained pure 

 cultures of this organism from the tissues in the disease, 

 but by experiments on horses and other animals conclu- 

 sively established its causal relationship. The disease had 

 for a long time before this discovery been recognised as 

 directly communicable amongst horses, and also to the 

 human subject ; various attempts had been made to dis- 

 cover the organism producing it, and even announcements 

 had been made of such discovery, but these are now known 

 to be erroneous. The results of Loffler and Schutz have 

 been fully confirmed. The same organism has also been 

 cultivated from the disease in the human subject, first by 

 Weichselbaum in 1885, who obtained it from the pustules 

 in a case of acute glanders in a woman, and by inoculation 

 on animals obtained results similar to those of Loffler and 

 Schutz. 



Within recent years a substance, mallein, has been 

 obtained from the cultures of the glanders bacillus by a 

 method similar to that by which tuberculin was prepared, 

 and has been found to produce corresponding effects in 

 animals suffering from glanders to those produced by tuber- 

 culin in tuberculous animals. 



