ANTHRAX, 135 
discernible under the microscope. A drop from the 
first flask produced the same effect in a second, and 
from that to a third, and soon. By this means the 
organism was completely freed from all which was 
foreign to it in the original blood, since it is calculated 
that after from eight to ten of such processes, the 
drop of blood was diluted in a volume of liquid 
greater than the volume of the earth. Yet the tenth, 
twentieth, and even the fiftieth infusion would, when 
a drop was inserted under the skin of a sheep, procure 
its death by splenic fever, with the same symptoms 
as those produced by the original drop of blood. The 
bacillus is, therefore, the sole cause of the disease. 
These cultures have often since been repeated by 
numerous observers, so that the microbe has been 
studied in all its forms, and the extent of its poly- 
morphism has been ascertained. At the end of two 
days the bacterium, which, while still in the blood, 
is of a short, abrupt form, displays excessively long 
filaments, which are sometimes rolled up like a coil 
of string. In about a week many of the filaments 
contain refracting, somewhat elongated nuclei. These 
nuclei presently form chaplets, in consequence of the 
rupture of the cell-wall of the rod which gave birth 
to them ; others, again, float in the liquid in the form 
of isolated globules. These nuclei are the spores or 
germs of the microbes, which germinate when placed 
in the infusion, become elongated, and reproduce fresh 
bacilli. 
