XVIL] SEPTIC AND PATHOGENIC ORGANISMS. 159 



guinea-pig inoculated with tuberculous matter occurred several 

 times. In all cases freshly drawn-out glass capillary pipettes 

 had been used for performing the inoculation, and also the other 

 instruments had been carefully cleaned before the inoculation. 



I myself had the following accidental contaminations : 



A guinea-pig had been inoculated with a culture of bacillus 

 anthracis, which I did not expect would produce anthrax, the 

 culture not being capable of starting new cultures, the bacillar 

 threads being all in a state of degeneration. The animal, of 

 course, remained unaffected. Some weeks afterwards inspecting 

 the guinea-pig, to my surprise, I found the inguinal lymphatic 

 glands at the side of the former inoculation greatly swollen, 

 filled with cheesy pus. The animal was killed, and was found 

 to be affected with general tuberculosis, the cheesy matter of 

 the tubercular deposits containing the tubercle bacilli. Com- 

 paring my notes on this animal with those of my friend 

 Lingard, we found that on the very day on which I inoculated 

 the animal with my anthrax culture we had inoculated several 

 other guinea-pigs with tuberculous matter. This tuberculous 

 matter was prepared in the same room in which I prepared 

 the fluid for my anthrax inoculation, but the instruments in 

 the two sets of experiments had not been the same. 



A rabbit was inoculated with a culture of bacillus anthracis 

 which I did not expect would produce anthrax. The animal 

 remained unaffected with anthrax, but died after four weeks 

 with the symptoms of extremely well-marked tuberculosis in 

 i'act, the best marked case that I have seen of both lungs, 

 spleen, liver, and kidney. The tubercular deposits contained 

 the tubercle bacilli. 



Also in this instance inoculations with tuberculous matter 

 had been going on at the same time, when I meant to have 

 inoculated nothing else but a culture of anthrax bacilli. 



I think all these facts taken together prove unmistakably 

 that working with two contagia in the same laboratory and at 

 the same period, accidental contamination is of no rare 

 occurrence. And this applies with equal force to Buchner's 

 experiments. Buchner worked extensively with anthrax 

 cultures in the same laboratory, and at the same time he had 

 those successful cases of anthrax in mice which he thought to 

 have inoculated with cultures of hay bacillus, and accidental 

 contamination probably was the result. Buchner himself has 

 experimentally shown that anthrax virus in the shape of 

 spores can by inhalation produce anthrax, and, therefore, this 

 is another argument against his above cases of positive results. 

 I am assuming that his cultures of hay bacillus were really 



