XL] BACILLUS : PATHOGENIC FORMS. 14? 



in many parts of the body. The presence of bacilli in the extravasa- 

 tions into the mueous membrane of the trachea and bronchi does not 

 necessarily mean that these parts represent the points of entrance of 

 the bacilli into the system, as Greenfield seems to regard as self-evident 

 (Reports of the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, 1881). 

 As a matter of fact I find in every lung of mouse, rabbit, and guinea- 

 pig, dead after subcutaneous inoculation with anthrax, bacilli anthracis 

 in the alveolar cavities and in the smaller and larger bronchi. Ingestion 

 of bacillar material is sometimes followed by anthrax, but in these cases 

 abrasions in the mucous membrane of the mouth, pharynx, or gut, may 

 have been the real place of entrance. Mice fed with anthrax material 

 do not become infected (Klein, ibid. 1881). But the reported cases 

 of intestinal mycosis (see for the literature of this subject, Koch, 

 "^Etiologie d. Milzbrandes," MittheiL a. d. k. Gesundheitsamte, 1881,) 

 seem nevertheless to indicate that such a mode of infection, namely, 

 by the alimentary canal, is not excluded. Compare alsoFalk, Virchow's 

 Archiv, vol. xciii. From recent observations by Koch and others, it 

 has become clear, that infection by the alimentary canal can be readily 

 produced with spores. 



Rodents inoculated with the bacillus of the blood or 

 spleen of an animal dead of anthrax, or with the bacillus or 

 spores of an artificial culture, die generally within forty-eight 

 hours ; in some instances in twenty-four to thirty hours, in 

 other exceptional instances after forty-eight to sixty hours. 

 The blood in all instances contains the bacilli, the spleen is 

 large and full of bacilli, and so are the blood-vessels of most 

 other organs, the exudations, and the urine. In the placenta 

 of a pregnant guinea-pig dead in consequence of inoculated 

 anthrax, I have seen that the bacilli kept strictly as a rule 

 within the maternal blood-vessels, and are wholly absent in 

 the blood of the vessels of the foetus. Subcutaneous in- 

 oculation or injection into the cutis of the minutest quantity 

 of bacillus-containing material (blood or artificial culture) 

 invariably produces death. Subcutaneous injection of 

 bacillus-containing material in the guinea-pig almost always 

 produces a characteristic oedema, spreading sometimes over 



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