BLACK QUARTER 431 



may be frothy from the development of gas. Other bacilli will 

 probably be present. 



(1) Make films from the discharge. Stain some with Loffler's 

 blue, and others by Gram's method. Examine microscopically, and 

 look for bacilli of the forms described. B. Welchii stains, malignant 

 oedema does not stain, by Gram. 



(2) Inoculate two guinea-pigs subcutaneously with the discharge 

 or with portions of the tissues. It the animals die, look for the 

 characteristic organism. 



(3) An attempt may be made to isolate the bacillus by anaerobic 

 cultures and plate cultivations, prepared from unheated, and 

 heated (80 C. for ten minutes), material. 



Bacillus cadaveris sporogenes 



This is another organism isolated by Klein, 1 and has to be dis- 

 tinguished from the B. Welchii. The two organisms are morpho- 

 logically very similar and both stain by Gram's method, but the 

 B. cadaveris sporogenes does not produce the typical changes in 

 milk. In a culture two or three days old the milk below the cream 

 layer commences to clear, and later this change proceeds rapidly, 

 so that at the end of a week three layers are apparent an upper of 

 unchanged cream, a middle, yellowish and watery, and a lower of 

 precipitated casein. Its colonies on agar are also different, sending 

 out ramifying, anastomosing threads from their margins, and it 

 spores freely on agar in two to three days. 



Black Quarter 



Syn. : Black Leg, Quarter Evil, Symptomatic Anthrax, Rausch- 

 brand. 



Black quarter is a disease affecting sheep and oxen, and is un- 

 known in man. The names black quarter, black leg, and quarter 

 evil are derived from the dark discoloration of the muscles of the 

 leg and flanks or quarters of the affected animals. When the muscles 

 are cut into, a thin sanguineous fluid exudes, and in this fluid slender 

 bacilli are present, some of which are swollen or club-shaped from 

 the presence of spores. The muscles are dark, slightly crepitant 

 owing to the presence of gas, and have a rancid odour. 



The organism, the B. (Clostridium) Chauvcei, is a slender rod 



1 Centr.f. Bakt. (l te Abt.), xxv, p. 278. 



