ANTHRAX 79 



Kausch wrote a monograph on this disease in which he held that it is 

 due to paralysis of the nerves of respiration; but he offered no 

 explanation of the paralysis. Delafond held that anthrax has its 

 origin in the influence of the chemical composition of the soil on the 

 food, thus inducing pathologic changes from malnutrition. The con- 

 tagious nature of the disease was clearly established in 1845 by 

 Gerlach. This was confirmed by the studies of Heuzinger and was 

 endorsed by Virchow in 1855, since which time it has never been 

 questioned. However, as early as 1849 the bacilli had been seen by 

 Pollender. Pollender did not publish his observations until 1855, but 

 he states that they were made in the fall of 1849. First, he examined 

 the blood of five cows dead from anthrax, and compared this with 

 material taken from the spleen of a healthy animal. The examina- 

 tions were not made until from eighteen to twenty-four hours after 

 death, and he states that the blood was stinking, thus indicating that 

 it had become contaminated with putrefactive organisms, but the 

 description which he gives shows that he actually saw anthrax bacilli. 

 He used a crude compound microscope made by Plossl, and he gave 

 his attention to the blood corpuscles, chyle globules, and the bacilli. 



His description of the micro-organisms may be condensed as fol- 

 lows: The third and most interesting microscopic bodies seen in 

 anthrax blood are innumerable masses of rod-like, solid, opaque 

 bodies, the length of which varies from 1/400 to 1/200 of a line, and 

 the breadth averages 1/3,000 of a line. They resemble the "vibrio 

 bacillus" or "Vibrio ambiguosus" They are non-motile and neither 

 water nor dilute acids, nor strong alkalies have any effect on them, 

 and for this reason he concluded that they must be regarded as vege- 

 table organisms. He questioned whether they existed in the blood of 

 the living animal or resulted from putrefaction, but was inclined to 

 believe the former, and thought they might represent the infecting 

 organism, or at least the bearer of the infection. It will be seen that 

 Pollender presented no positive proof that these rod-like bodies had 

 any causal relation to the disease. In 1856 Brauel inoculated sheep, 

 horses and dogs with blood taken from animals sick with anthrax, and 

 in this way demonstrated that the disease could be transmitted to 

 sheep and horses, but not to dogs. He found sheep highly susceptible, 

 horses less so, and dogs quite immune. He also demonstrated the 



