598 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Virus of Anthrax * — In a preliminary communication, K. Osol 

 describes some experiments, performed in the Pathological Institute 

 of Dorpat, by which he claims to have proved that the bacilli which 

 occur in anthrax are only to be regarded as the secondary products 

 of a chemical virus. 



Eecounting the previous observations of Professor Semner and of 

 Eosenberger, who claim to have shown the same thing in septicaemia ; 

 he states that he himself, in " numerous experiments," thoroughly 

 sterilized, by prolonged boiling, virulent anthrax blood, diluted with 

 an equal bulk of water, which was filtered ; the residue again treated 

 with water, boiled and filtered ; the filtrate from both, to insure 

 sterilization, was then boiled for two hours on three successive 

 days. Of this concentrated viscid anthrax virus, " large quantities " 

 were injected subcutaneously into rabbits and mice, with carefully 

 disinfected syringes ; cultivations of sterilized bouillon were at the same 

 time inoculated each with " one drop " of the same superheated virus ; 

 and at the same time control-animals inoculated with small quantities 

 of the same, to demonstrate the absence of micro-organisms. As an 

 additional precaution, blood of healthy animals was treated in the 

 same manner as the anthrax blood, and similarly injected in large 

 quantities into rabbits and mice. 



The animals inoculated with superheated anthrax blood died in 

 from 3 to 6 days ; in about a fourth of the cases typical anthrax 

 bacilli were found in the blood and organs ; in the other cases, 

 numerous micrococci, as previously found in anthrax blood by 

 Semner in 1871, and Bollinger in 1872, and shown by them to be a 

 phase of development of the typical bacilli, which has been quite 

 recently confirmed by Archangelski. The blood of animals killed by 

 inoculation with the superheated anthrax virus, when inoculated into 

 sterilized cultivating fluids, developed typical bacilli. Eabbits and 

 mice inoculated with it died of pronounced anthrax, in general with 

 numerous bacilli in the blood, or, in their place, micrococci and 

 " diplococci," which, cultivated, developed to anthrax bacilli. The 

 blood of these animals similarly was fatally infective. 



In the control experiments, while animals inoculated with " small 

 quantities" of superheated virus remained perfectly unaffected, 

 cultivations inoculated with similar quantities continued sterile ; hence 

 the author claims to have proved that in anthrax blood there is a 

 specific chemical poison, soluble in water, not volatile, of undetermined 

 composition, which, inoculated into other animals, so affects the tissues 

 of the organism that the innocuous microparasites normally present 

 therein, develope under its influence, in from 3 to 6 days, to typical 

 anthrax bacilli in some cases, and in others to an earlier form of the 

 same. 



The control-animals inoculated with superheated normal blood 

 were unaffected, save by a slight pyrexia. The author, as he states, 

 from these experiments, does not conclude that the bacilli have no 

 significance or action in anthrax, but, on the contrary, that they alone 



* Centralbl. f. d. Med. Wiss., 1884, pp. 401-4. 



