PART III. J Splenic Fever induced without the Bacilli in the Blood. 60 1 



I.— The evidence which has been adduced showing that the virulence of Septinous 

 Substances is not dependent on vegetable life. 



Seeing that so much evidence can be adduced to show that these organisms, 

 whether baciUi or spirilla, are but epi-phenomena, the s-pecijic change in the fluids of 

 the body having taken place before the slightest indication of their presence can be 

 detected, the question which naturally suggests itself is : whether sufficient evidence 

 exists to show that inoculations can be effected with like material in the absence of 

 such living organisms. The reply to this question, so far as anthracoid and cognate 

 diseases are concerned, is distinctly in the affirmative ; but, with regard to recurrent 

 fever, it cannot be as yet definitely stated that the malady is inoculable, so that for 

 the present it may be left out of consideration. 



When Brauell published his paper in Virchow's Archiv in 1858 detailing his 

 experiments to prove that splenic-fever was an inoculable disease, he further stated 

 the opinion that the organisms found in the blood could not be the carriers of the 

 virus, seeing that blood not containing bacilli had been found to generate the disease. 

 Bouley has arrived at a similar conclusion, and Bollinger, who has repeated Brauell's 

 and Bouley's experiments, has also shown that the disease may exist without the 

 presence of bacilli in the blood, that such blood will induce the disease in other 

 animals, and that even under such circumstances organisms may develop in the blood 

 of the inoculated animal, and be detected during life, as well as after death.* 



Similar observations have been made with regard to septicaemia, and the allied 

 disease-conditions associated with the presence of bacilli, some of which have been 

 already referred to. M. Colin, for example, found that T^^rVo^ of a drop of septicaemia- 

 blood would kill a rabbit in 36 hours when inoculated by means of a lancet ; that 

 the virulent property existed before the appearance of rod-bacteria ; and that the 

 pernicious character of the fluid became evident contemporaneously with the advent of 

 very minute spherical bodies, the consequences, as Colin believes, of the altered character 

 of the blood. t 



It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the poisonous properties of septinous 

 blood and of other decomposing animal solutions gradually disappear towards the third 

 or fourth day, a fact which is scarcely reconcilable with the doctrine that the poison 

 resides in the apparently almost imperishable " spores " of the bacilli which existed during 

 the earlier stages of decomposition. A like feature characterises the virus of splenic 

 disease, of small-pox, and of syphilis. Hiller,| in summarising the results of filtration 

 of septinous fluids, writes that the most decisive experiments have demonstrated that 

 after filtration through finely porous material, such as charcoal, porous earthenware, 

 compressed wadding, etc., until the fluids have been shown to be absolutely free from 



* O. Bollinger: " Zur pathologie des Milzbrandes : " Munchen, 1872. Quoted in Schmidt's Jahrbucher, 

 Bd. 166, p. 205; 1875. 



f " Nouvelles recherches sur Taction des matieres putrides et sur la septic^mie." Btilletin de V Acadimie, 

 October 187B ; cited by Birch-Hi rschf eld, 1. c, page 174. 



\ '' U-iber putrides Gift," CetUralhlatt fur Chirurgle, Nos. 10, 11, and 12, 1876. 



