Vital Resistance 751 



Kuhne stains the section for about half an hour, washes it in water, 

 decolorizes it carefully in hydrochloric acid (10 drops to 500 cc. of 

 water), immerses it at once in a solution of lithium carbonate (8 drops 

 of a saturated solution of hthium carbonate in 10 cc. of water), 

 places it in a bath of distilled water for a few minutes, dips it into 

 absolute alcohol colored with a little methylene-blue, dehydrates it 

 in ahilin oil containing a Uttle methylene-blue in solution, washes it 

 in pure anilin oil, not colored, then in a hght ethereal oil, clears it in 

 xylol, and finally mount's it in balsam. 



Vital Resistance.— Sunlight kills it after twenty-four hours' 

 exposure. Thorough drying destroys it in a short time. When 

 planted upon culture-media, sealed, and kept cool and in the dark, 

 it may be kept alive for months and even years. Exposure to i 

 per cent. carboUc acid destroys it in about half an hour; i : 1000 

 bichlorid of mercury solution, in about fifteen minutes. According 

 to Hiss and Zinsser, it may remain alive in the water of horse- troughs 

 for seventy days. 



Isolation. — Attempts to isolate the glanders bacillus from infec- 

 tious discharges, by the usual plate method, are apt to fail, on ac- 

 count of the presence of other more rapidly growing organisms. 



A better method seems to be by infecting an animal and recov- 

 ering the bacillus from its tissues. For this purpose the guinea- 

 pig, being a highly susceptible as well as a readily procurable 

 animal, is appropriate. 



From the tissues of the inoculated animals pure cultures are easily 

 made. Perhaps the best places from which to secure a culture are 

 the softened nodes which have not ruptured, or the joints. 



Diagnosis of Glanders. — Straus* has given us a method which 

 is of great use, both for isolating pure cultures of the glanders bacillus 

 and for making a diagnosis of the disease. 



But a short time is required. The material suspected to contain the glanders 

 bacillus is injected into the peritoneal cavity of a male guinea-pig. In three or 

 four days the disease becomes established and the testicles enlarge; the skin over 

 them becomes red and shining; the testicles themselves begin to suppurate, and 

 often evacuate through the skin. The animal dies in about two weeks. If, 

 however, it be killed and its testicles examined, the tunica vaginalis testis will be 

 found to contain pus, and sometimes to be partially obliterated by inflammatory 

 exudation. The bacUli are present in this pus, and can be secured from it in pure 

 cultures. 



The value of Straus' method has been somewhat lessened by the 

 discovery by Kutcher,t that a new bacillus, which he has classed 

 among the pseudo-tubercle bacilli, produces a similar testicular 

 swelling when injected into the abdominal cavity; also by Levy and 

 Steinmetz,t who found that Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus was 

 also capable of provoking suppurative orchitis. However, the 



* "Compt. rendu Acad. d. Sciences," Paris, cvin, 530. 

 f'Zeitschrift fiir Hygiene," Bd. xxi, Heft i, Dec. 6, 1895. 

 t "Berliner klin. Wochenschrift," March 18, 1895, No. 11. 



