xvn] SEPTIC AND PATHOGENIC ORGANISMS. 211 



therefore capable of locomotion ; the bacillus anthracis is 

 not motile. I am quite aware that Cossar E \vart (Quarterly 

 Journal of Microscopical Science, April 1878) states that he 

 has seen in a specimen kept artificially heated under micro- 

 scopic observation that the bacillus anthracis, at first non- 

 motile, is capable of becoming motile. At one or both ends 

 a flagellum grows out from its body. But this observation 

 is unreliable, since Ewart did not guard himself in any way 

 from the accidental introduction of septic bacilli, many of 

 which are motile. Besides, he says of the bacilli, which he 

 figures as anthrax bacilli, that they are connected with one 

 another by two fine threads, and that they probably separate 

 from one another and each retains one filament, which is its 

 flagellum. But his observations, so far as they have appli- 

 cation to anthrax bacilli, are capable of quite a different 

 interpretation. In every specimen of blood and in every 

 artificial culture bacilli can be seen, in which at one place 

 or more the protoplasm is wanting, owing, as I have shown, 

 to degeneration ; in such places only the empty sheath is 

 present and of course in fresh specimens this gives the 

 appearance as if the two protoplasmic portions of the 

 bacillus were connected with one another by two fine 

 threads, i.e. the sheath being transparent is seen here 

 edgeways. 



In no instance has the bacillus anthracis been observed 

 to be motile. I have examined thousands of specimens of 

 fresh bacillus anthracis in the blood and in artificial cultures, 

 and I have never seen anything that in the least would lead 

 me to differ from this proposition. 



As regards the spores they are of the same aspect and 

 size in both the hay bacillus and bacillus anthracis. The 

 threads in good cultures form in both cases the same bundles 

 more or less twisted and forming convolutions, but in certain 



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