^^/^ Microscopic Organisms in Blood and their Relation to Disease. \yh.wY in. 



filamentous matrix. The fully developed spores of our bacillus differ from those of 

 hay-bacillus and anthrax bacillus by being more distinctly cylindrical and much smaller." 

 In a footnote it is mentioned that in the figures accompanying Koch's first paper in 

 Cohn's Beitrdge (1876) " the spores are represented in many places as more or less 

 spherical in shape ; " but if the very valuable micro-photographs of these bodies accom- 

 panying Koch's subsequent paper * be referred to, it will be found that the " spores " 

 are very decidedly of a long-oval form. The pig-bacillus " spores " have according to 

 Klein a long diameter of 0-0005 mm., whereas those of anthrax = 0-0015 — -002 mm. 

 " At first," writes Dr. Klein, " I misinterpreted the spores, regarding them as a kind 

 of micrococci, and only after repeated observations have I succeeded in tracing them 

 through their different stages of development." Unfortunately, Dr. Klein has not 

 detailed the grounds on which this very important statement is based, nor are figures 

 given. It can scarcely be supposed that any of the figures in the plate are intended 

 to represent the germination of a particular spore. As this distinguished observer well 

 knows, it is not what takes place before the supposed germination, or after it, which 

 has been the subject of debate for so many years in connection with the development 

 of the schizomycetes, but the act itself. None of the figures furnished by Dr. Klein 

 present any resemblance to Dr. Ewart's germination-figure (Fig. 45, page 575) in 

 which this process is unmistakably depicted, but some of them are somewhat like 

 those of Koch (Fig. 41, page 574); on the other hand. Dr. Klein writes regarding the 

 conclusions of the observer who first ventured to pronounce these bodies in Bacillus 

 athracis to be spores, " I entirely differ from Dr. Koch with regard to the mode of 

 germination of the spores of bacillus." The points of difference are matters of 

 secondary moment and need not be specially referred to here. 



Dr. Klein concludes his paper thus : " Seeing that splenic fever, pneumo-enteritis, and 

 specific septicaemia possess a great affinity in anatomical respects, and seeing that in 

 splenic fever and pneumo-enteritis there is a definite species of bacillus, — the difference 

 of species being sufficiently great to account for the differences in the two diseases, — 

 we may with some probability expect that also the third of the group, viz., specific 

 septicaemia, is due to a bacillus.^ This, however, remains to be demonstrated." 



Dr. Klein, therefore, believes that whilst the evidence adduced by himself in support 

 of the cause of pneumo-enteritis in the pig being a bacillus is sufficient to warrant a 

 positive statement in the affirmative, that adduced by Davaine, Pasteur, and others in 

 favour of a like cause for septicaemia is not. 



D.— The Vegetable Organisms in the Blood in Recurrent Fever. 



There is one other disease in which vegetable organisms have been found in the 

 blood, namely, recurrent fever (Febris or Typhus recurrens). In this affection also the 

 organisms belong to the lower fungi-group, the schizomycetm, — that is to say, the 



* Cohn's Beitrdge, Band 11, Heft 3, Taf. xvi, 1877. 

 t The italics are mine. — T. R. L. 



