CHAPTER XXXI. 

 BACILLUS MALLEI. 1 



Introduction. 



Section I. Experimental inoculation, p. 480. 



Section II. Morphology, p. 482. 



Section III. Biological properties, p. 484. 



1. Vitality and virulence, p. 484. 2. Toxin ; preparation of mallein ; mallein in 

 the diagnosis of glanders, p. 484. 3. Vaccination, p. 485. 4. Agglutination, p. 486. 

 Section IV. Detection and isolation of the bacillus, p. 486. 



THE bacillus of glanders was discovered independently by Lreffler and 

 Schutz and by Bouchard, Capitan and Charrin. 



Glanders is almost entirely restricted to the Solipedes though men having 

 to do with horses occasionally contract the disease from infected animals, 

 and a few cases are on record in which infection followed manipulation of 

 cultures of the organism in the laboratory. The disease has also been noticed 

 to occur spontaneously among the carnivora lions and tigers after these 

 animals had been fed upon meat from glandered animals. 



Two clinical types of the disease are recognized depending upon whether the 

 lesions are more prominent in the skin -farcy or in the internal organs glanders 

 proper. The latter is the more common type : it is characterized at the outset by 

 infection of the nasal mucous membrane and related lymphatic glands, and later 

 by lesions in the internal organs more especially in the lungs and in the genital 

 organs : the disease may run either an acute or chronic course. In farcy, which 

 also may assume an acute or a chronic form, the chief lesions are abscesses in the 

 skin the so-called farcy buds, which terminate in ulcers accompanied by lym- 

 phangitis [farcy pipes] and occasionally orchitis. 



Glanders must be carefully distinguished from bovine farcy, an entirely different 

 disease, not transmissible to man and due to infection with a fungus of the genus 

 Discomyces (Chap. XLVIII). 



SECTION I. EXPERIMENTAL INOCULATION. 



. The ass is more susceptible to glanders than any other animal and 

 inoculation is practically always followed by an acute attack of the disease 

 though Arloing has recorded one instance in which a chronic form of the 

 disease developed. 



Experimentally infection is usually produced by rubbing infected material 

 (pus or catarrhal discharge from the nose) into a few scarifications made on 

 the skin of the forehead. An oedematous swelling rapidly appears followed by 



1 See footnote p. 245. 



