BACILLUS (EDEMATIS MALIGNL 343 



Infection occurs especially readily if the wound is con- 

 tused or, as is very often the case in natural infection, 

 other bacteria, hardly injurious of themselves, are simul- 

 taneously inoculated; for example, Bact. vulgare or Bact. 

 prodigiosum. 



Brief Differential Diagnosis. 



See the key, on page 306, for the differential diagnosis 

 between Bac. cedematis maligni and Bac. Chauvcei. For 

 completing the diagnosis the following are to be carried 

 out: 



1. Examination of a fresh preparation for motility. 



2. Two smear preparations are made from the edema- 

 tous fluid or muscle juice and stained with fuchsin and by 

 Gram's method. 



3. Experiments upon guinea-pigs, and the examination 

 of the phlegmon as to gaseous contents, and the bile for 

 bacilli contained in it. 



4. Experiments upon rabbits, which often give negative 

 results with the Bac. Chauvcei. 



Related Varieties (Pseudo=edema Bacilli). 



Bacilli have been described by numerous writers which 

 also kill experimental animals, with the production of 

 bloody and emphysematous edema, but which do not 

 correspond exactly with the bacilli of malignant edema 

 or symptomatic anthrax. Recently v. Hibler has devoted 

 a special study to these varieties and found representatives 

 of most of the forms described which deviate somewhat 

 in individual properties. 



All these forms differ from malignant edema in the 

 absence of thread-formation, growing as short rods, like 

 symptomatic anthrax, and in pairs, and no more distin- 

 guishable from one another than some of the water 

 vibriones. The following will give some idea: 



Aside from the absence of thread-formation, the folloAV- 

 ing correspond very well with malignant edema: the 

 pseudo-edema bacillus of Liborius (Z. H. i, 163) 

 (according to Liborius, it has two spores in a single cell) 

 and the Bacillus emphysematis maligni of Wicklein 

 (Virchow's Archiv, cxxv, 75), while Kerry's new patho- 



