XL] BACILLUS: PATHOGENIC FORMS. Ill 



shaken up, it will be noticed on incubation that the fluid remains 

 limpid. All the growth, in the shape of the fluffy whitish 

 masses, takes place at the bottom. 



After a few days' incubation, no matter what the tempera- 

 ture is, many of the bacilli and their leptothrix-filaments 

 show signs of degeneration, consisting in the granular disin- 

 tegration and absorption of the protoplasmic contents of the 



FIG. 78. FROM A PRKPARATION OF THE BLOOD OF SI-LEEN OF A GUIXEA-PIG 

 DEAD OF ANTHKAX. 



1. White blood-corpuscle. 



2. Red blood-discs, shrunken. 



3. Chains of bacillus anthrucis. 



4. Degenerating bacilli, the sheath only being preserved. 

 Magnifying power 700. (The preparation has been stained with gentian- violet.) 



bacilli and their filaments, at first only here and there, but 

 by and by over longer pieces. Such bacilli and leptothrix- 

 filaments appear in such places as if empty. This is also 

 noticed in the bacilli of the blood and spleen of an animal 

 inoculated with anthrax even at the point of death or soon 

 after death, if the number of bacilli is great. 



Another form of degeneration consists in the filaments 

 of bacilli becoming much curled and swollen, and finally 

 disintegrated into an amorphous debris. 



As long as the bacilli grow in the depth of a fluid they 



