86 BACTERIAL POISONS. 



most prominent of these symptoms are dyspnoea, cyanosis, 

 convulsions, dilated pupils, subnormal temperature, and, 

 in general, the phenomena of asphyxia. Moreover, post- 

 mortem examination reveals conditions similar to those 

 observed after death by deprivation of oxygen. The veins 

 are distended, the blood is dark and thick, the parenchy- 

 matous organs are cyanotic, and the lungs hypersemic. 

 Bollinger compared this form of anthrax to poisoning 

 with hydrocyanic acid, which was then believed to j)roduce 

 fatal results by robbing the blood of its oxygen. 



This theory was supported by the observations of Szpil- 

 MANN, who found that while the putrefactive bacteria are 

 destroyed by ozone, the bacillus anthracis thrives and mul- 

 tiplies in this gas. 



This theory jDre-supposed a large number of bacilli in the 

 blood, and this accorded with the estimate of Davaine, 

 which placed the number at from eight to ten million in a 

 single drop. But more extended and careful observation 

 showed that the blood of animals dead from anthrax is 

 often very poor in bacilli. VmcHOW reported cases of 

 this kind. Bollinger himself found the bacilli often 

 confined to certain organs and not abundant in the blood. 

 Then Siedamgrotzky counted the organisms in the blood 

 in various cases and found not only that the estimate made 

 by Davaine is too large, but that in many instances the 

 number present in the blood is small. Joffroy found in 

 some of his inoculation experiments that the animals died 

 before any bacilli appeared in the blood. These and other 

 investigations^ of sonilar ' character began to cause workers 

 in this field of research to doubt the truth of the theory of 

 Bollinger, and these doubts were soon converted into 

 positive evidence against it. Pasteur, in support of the 

 theory, reported that birds were not susceptible to anthrax, 

 and he accounted for this by supposing that the blood 

 corpuscles in birds do not part with their oxygen readily. 

 However, it was shown by Oemleb and Feser that the 

 learned Frenchman had generalized from limited data, and 

 that many birds are especially susceptible to the disease. 

 Oemler found that the blood even when rich in bacilli 



