34 Transactions of the Society. 



in the liver some few rods of far too great a length to be classed as 

 Bacteria. These were perfectly cylindrical and unsegmented, so that 

 I concluded it corresponded more nearly to the genus Bacillus of 

 Cohn. Further examination of the blood showed some few " rods " 

 there too. It is probable that in blood of the living rabbit, and when 

 examined shortly after death, the cells do not attain any consider- 

 able length, as in a parallel manner the typical bacilli of anthrax, 

 it is well established, do not form spores in the living animal. 



The microbe here in question, however, clearly does not, I 

 think, form spores under any conditions yet observed, and artificial 

 cultivations die out altogether after a comparatively short time, 

 i. e. some weeks. In blood of the fowl, however, even when death 

 has occurred within eighteen hours of inoculation, and is examined 

 immediately afterwards, the long bacillar cells are numerous enough. 

 The microbes here cluster round the margins of the red corpuscles 

 (fig. 1), giving them a beaded appearance ; the white corpuscles 

 are enormously increased in number, amounting sometimes to one 

 in ten of the red ; the microbe is not usually found within either. 



The blood of a fowl in these cases is fatally infective to a 

 rabbit, and in minimal quantities, though the symptoms are widely 

 different in the two animals. There is also some variation in the 

 size and length though not in the form of the microbe, as might be 

 expected from analogy. The virus here, i. e. from the blood of 

 a fowl, seems to be fatal to rabbits in somewhat less time than 

 usual in the typical form of Davaine's septichsemia when originated 

 by inoculation with putrid blood, and transmitted from animal to 

 animal, but the post-mortem appearances and other symptoms are 

 identically the same in both cases, and differ markedly from those 

 in fowls, in which the large intestine is the principal seat of affec- 

 tion, and in a general way justifies the term cholera, though 

 dysentery would be more appropriate. 



Dr. Sternberg, U.S. Army, has described * a fatal form of 

 septichaemia in the rabbit, caused by the subcutaneous injection 

 of human saliva, and has given photographs of the microbe which 

 he found therein. His description corresponds pretty well with 

 my own observations on the organism, and in the main with the 

 symptoms of Davaine's septichsemia in the same animal, but the 

 figures in his photographs were to me unintelligible ; they represent 

 a colourless circular body of about 2 yu, in diameter, on a dark 

 ground, and having a dark nuclear-like centre ; but their appear- 

 ances are not described in the text. Kecently on staining a 

 preparation of the blood of a fowl in a case of chicken cholera, in 

 the manner above described (viz. with an alcoholic solution of 

 eosin, &c.), I obtained exactly the appearances here described, and 



* studies Biol. Lab. Johns-Hopkins Univ., 1882, p. 183, and Nat. Bd. of 

 Health Bull. U.S.A , ii. p. 781. 



