XXI] PATHOGENIC ORGANISMS 539 



abounds, is introduced, every new culture established from 

 this one will abound in this bacillus, and as it grows quicker 

 and more easily than the bacillus anthracis, the next cultiva- 

 tions become barren of all the bacilli anthracis and only 

 the non-pathogenic motile bacillus will be found present. 

 This criticism has been applied by Koch to Buchner's 

 experiments, and I must fully endorse it. 



But there is a much more serious statement of Buchner's 

 — serious, because if true in nature it is dreadful to contem- 

 plate to what amount of anthrax man and brute may become 

 subject— viz., he maintains to have succeeded in trans- 

 forming the hay bacillus into bacillus anthracis, by carrying 

 the former through many generations under ever varying 

 change of soil. It is needless to detail here all these experi- 

 ments of Buchner, since I do not attach any great value to 

 them, and I should not have troubled myself much about 

 them, were it not that one meets in mycological literature, 

 particularly on the part of botanists, an acceptance of 

 Buchner's statement that hay bacillus can change into the 

 pathogenic bacillus anthracis {see Zopf, Die Spaltpilze, 

 Breslau, 1883). 



I have repeated Buchner's experiments on rabbits, guinea- 

 pigs, and white mice. I have grown the hay bacillus in 

 various kinds of broth, in gelatine broth mixtures, in hydro- 

 cele fluid, in peptone fluid, in Agar-Agar and peptone, at 

 temperatures varying between 30° and 38° C, and I have, 

 to put it shortl)', never seen that it shows the least tendency 

 to change its general morphological characters, or that it 

 ever assumes the morphological or physiological characters 

 of the bacillus anthracis. I consider this a perfectly hope- 

 less task, and I feel sure any one might as soon attempt to 

 transform the bulb of the common onion into the bulb of 

 the poisonous colchicum. 



