xt.] BACILLUS: PATHOGENIC FORMS. 103 



and the peritoneal exudation, contain the same bacilli as the 

 subcutaneous exudation. Many of them include spores. By 

 injecting the bacillus into the peritoneal cavity of guinea-pigs 

 death is produced rapidly, especially after passing it through 

 two generations, so rapidly indeed that the animals often die 

 within sixteen hours (Burdon Sanderson and Klein). In all 

 these instances a viscid transparent slightly but spontaneously 

 coagulable exudation, poor in white and red corpuscles, is 

 found in the peritoneal cavity, and the peritoneum of all parts 

 is highly inflamed. Bacilli are present in it in enormous 

 numbers, many of them containing spores. The blood of the 

 heart does not contain bacilli immediately after death, but has 

 them some hours after. 



The bacilli in question are about (V003 to 0'005 mm. long 

 and a little over 0*001 mm. thick ; they are rounded at their 

 ends ; they form chains of two and more, and these chains 

 are straight or broken. They also form leptothrix, straight, or 

 more commonly curved. The bacilli have been artificially 

 cultivated by Pasteur l in blood-serum and in neutral solution 

 of Liebig's meat extract. Gaffky 2 grew them on potatoes at 

 38 C. The artificial culture is capable of producing the 

 malignant oedema, but it is always necessary to inject more 

 than minimal quantities. The bacilli grown in fluids outside 

 and inside the body form spores without free supply of air, 

 and are therefore anaerobic (Pasteur). 



In human faecal matter there are always present innumerable masses of bac- 

 teria micrococci, single and in dumb-bells, and in clumps of zooglcea, bacterium 

 termo, and various species of bacilli, varying in thickness, length, and in motility, 

 some being motile, others not. It has been shown by Bienstock (Centralbl. /. 

 mtd. Wiss. 1883, p. 919) that a bacillus can be cultivated from normal human 

 faeces which in many respects resembles the bacillus of malignant oedema ; it 

 produces death in mice, but without the symptoms of malignant oedema. 



Professor Rossbach has maintained (Centralblatt f. d. med. Wtes. 5, 1SS2) that 

 when a solution of papayotin (the juice of Carica papaya) is injected into the 

 veins of a rabbit, the animal dies, and shortly after death even so short a time 

 as fifty minutes after the injection there are found in the blood large numbers 

 of bacteria. Dowdeswell, however, states (Practitioner, May, 1SS3) that solu- 

 t : ons of papayotin contain as a rule the spores of a motile bacillus which in all 

 respects resembles bacillus subtilis ; hi artificial cultures in 10 per cent solutions 

 of papayotin, in blood-serum, and in broth, these spores develop into bacilli 

 which form leptothrix filaments, and in them spores soon make their appear- 

 am-e. Filtered papayotin solutions, when injected into the blood of rabbits, kill 

 Lke unfiltered ones, but neither during life nor after the death of the animals 

 could any organisms be detected in tlie blood. It appears to follow from these 

 experiments, that papayotin solutions contain spores, and that these spores are 

 those of a bacillus subtilis which does not possess any specific pathogenic 

 properties. 



(7i?) Bacillus of symptomatic anthrax (Ger. Ravschbrancl ; 

 FT eharbon symptomatique, Arloing, Cornevin, and Thomas, 



1 Bull, de I'Acad. 1S77. = Mitfheil. a. d. k. Gesundh. 1SSO. 



