20 THE ETIOLOGY OF THE BACTERIAL DISEASES. 



cases of this kind and Bollinger himself found the bacilli often con- 

 fined to certain organs, and not abundant in the blood. Later, 

 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, 

 while Joffroy observed in some of his inoculation experiments that 

 the animals died before any bacilli appeared in the blood. These 

 and other investigations of similar character caused 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 ; 

 but for a while it was the subject of an interesting controversy. 

 Pasteur, in support of the theory, reported that birds were not sus- 

 ceptible 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 Oemler and Feser that the learned 

 Frenchman had generalized from limited data, and that many birds 

 are especially susceptible to this disease. Oemler found that the 

 blood, even when rich in anthrax bacilli, still possesses the bright 

 red color of oxyhemoglobin. Toepper and Roloff reported cases of 

 apoplectiform anthrax in which there was no difficulty in respiration, 

 and Toussaint caused animals which had been inoculated with the 

 anthrax bacillus to breathe air containing a large volume of oxygen 

 and found that this did not modify the symptoms or retard death. 

 Finally, Nencki determined the amount of physiological oxidation 

 going on in the bodies of animals sick with anthrax by estimating 

 the amount of phenol excreted after the administration of one gram 

 of benzol, and found that the oxidation of the benzol was not dimin- 

 ished by the disease. In short, the theory that germs destroy life 

 by depriving the blood of its oxygen has been found not to be true 

 for anthrax, and if not true for anthrax, certainly it cannot be for 

 any other known disease. The bacillus anthracis is, as has been 

 stated, aerobic, while many of the pathogenic bacteria are anaerobic 

 — that is, they live in the absence of oxygen ; this element is not 

 necessary to their existence, and indeed, when present in large 

 amount, it is fatal to them. Moreover, in many diseases the bacteria 

 are not found in the blood at all, and, lastly, the symptoms of these 

 diseases are not those of asphyxia. These facts have caused a com- 

 plete abandonment of this theory. 



2. If a properly stained section of a kidney taken from a guinea- 

 pig, which has been inoculated with the bacillus anthracis, be ex- 

 amined under the microscope, the bacilli will be found to be pres- 

 ent in such large numbers that they form emboli, which not only 

 close, but actually distend the capillaries and even larger blood ves- 

 sels, and interfere with the normal functions of the organ. A 

 similar condition is sometimes found on microscopical examination of 

 the liver, spleen and lungs. From these appearances it was in- 



