Glanders. 233 



ern ranges where the disease tends to be mild, Billings observed 

 a deadly extension when yarded during winter storms. Debility 

 from chronic ill health, starvation, overwork and damp, dark, 

 draughty stables, is so conducive to the disease that it was at one 

 time considered as the sole cause. Close confinement in impure 

 air is at once a cause of increased susceptibility and a means of 

 concentration and transmission of the poison. Hence confine- 

 ment, between decks, of military and other horses, carried by sea, 

 is a .source of wide extensions. On the other hand insular places 

 from which strange horses are excluded or into which they are 

 admitted under careful inspection and quarantine have succeeded 

 in preserving immunity. Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand 

 are examples. 



Bacillus Mallei. Christot and Kiener claimed to have found a 

 bacillus in the lesions of glanders in 1868. In 1881 bacilli were 

 found by Bouchard in a glander abscess in man, and these were 

 cultivated in vitro and inoculated in a number of animals, by 

 Capitan and Charrin in 1882. Independently in the .same year 

 (1882) Loffler and Schiitz discovered the bacillus, cultivated it 

 in vitro, and successfully inoculated it on animals. The microbe 

 is rod shaped, 2 to 5/x. long, by 0.5 to 1.4/x thick, the same length 

 as the bacillus tuberculosis but thicker. It is non-motile, aerobic 

 (facultative anaerobic) and grows readily in a variety of culture 

 media at a temperature of 37" C. On neutral bouillon of the 

 flesh of horse, ox, calf or chicken with or without peptone, it 

 grows readily, producing cloudiness in one or two days. In pep- 

 tonized gelatine it forms a whiti.sh flocculent mass. On glycerine 

 agar with milk it forms in 48 hours a milk white layer, changing 

 to yellowish brown. On potato it forms long slender filaments, 

 in yellow, viscous, glistening colonies, changing to fawn and 

 darker. It grows best at 35° to 39° C. and growth ceases below 

 25" C. , and above 42" C. It stains tardily in aniline colors, and 

 not at all by Gram's or Weigert's, but will readily take Kuhne's 

 stain prepared as follows : take of phenic acid in solution (5:100) 

 50 cc, absolute alcohol 10 cc, and i to 2 grammes methylin blue. 

 The stain is very easily bleached by acid, differing in this from 

 the bacillus tuberculo.sis. For decolorizing I^offler recommends 

 10 cc. distilled water, 2 drops of strong sulphuric acid, and i 

 drop of a 5 per cent, solution of oxalic acid. Sections should be 



