1 8 QUATERCENTENARY STUDIES IN PATHOLOGY 



appear to suffer pain, and nibbled grass freely. When lying, the limbs 

 were occasionally twitched backwards and forwards. 



It remained in very much the same condition until the evening of 

 May 24th, and was found dead on the following morning. 



The examination was made probably from seven to eight hours after 

 death. There was a complete absence of ticks, keds, or tick-bites, and 

 the skin was perfectly sound and unbroken. The peritoneal cavity con- 

 tained about I oz. of clear liquid, from which there separated a little 

 flocculent albuminous precipitate. The liquid, however, did not coagulate 

 universally on being retained in a sealed pipette. 



On microscopic examination, a (ew colourless corpuscles were found 

 within it containing very large granules, but nothing in the way of any 

 micro-organism could be detected. 



The carcase, otherwise, did not show any abnormality. 



Anaerobic cultures were made from the contents of the small intestine. 

 The tubes and their contents were heated up to 90° C. for a quarter of an 

 hour, cooled down, and thereafter incubated. The cultures were started 

 on May 25th, and by the following day were in a state of active germina- 

 tion, with tremendous evolution of gas. The medium employed was 

 glucose-beef-tea. The organism which grew seemed to be quite pure, 

 and consisted of a rod identical with that found in the peritoneal liquid 

 in other cases, relatively thick, and free from spores. It did not appear 

 to be motile. 



The method of obtaining the material from the intestine for cultiva- 

 tion purposes was as follows : — The pieces of bowel, the small intestine, 

 after being ligatured above and below, were cut off and placed in sterile 

 Petri's dishes. The surface of the bowel was singed with a red-hot 

 spatula. An opening was thereafter made with red-hot scissors and a 

 platinum loop introduced right into the channel of the bowel. A little 

 of the intestinal contents and mucus from the wall were withdrawn and 

 mixed with the hot glucose-beef-tea. The wire was never allowed to 

 touch the wound in the intestinal wall ; the material was taken entirely 

 from the interior. 



After twenty-six hours' growth 4 c.c. of this culture from the intestine 

 were inoculated subcutaneously into the left thigh of a Cheviot from 

 "clean" land, along with 5 c.c. of a i to 10 glacial acetic acid solution in 

 water. The inoculation was made on May 26th at 7*45 p.m. 



(18) 



