416 INFECTIVE DISEASES. 



cases are possibly not quite so common as they are reported to be. 

 It is well known that, as a rule, the services of a veterinary surgeon 

 are not called for except in hopeless or very severe cases. The 

 cowmen themselves, in many districts, treat the cows successfully, 

 and then send them into the market, and thus the existence of 

 previous cases may not have come to the knowledge of the veterinary 

 surgeon. 



Historical. — In 1845 Professor von Langenbeck, of Kiel, made 

 notes of a ease of vertebral caries in a man, and prepared drawings 

 of peculiar bodies in the pus from an abscess. The drawings were 

 published together with a reference to the case by Israel in 1878. 

 There can be little doiibt that these structures were the fungi of 

 actinomycosis. But the first to publish observations was Lebert 

 in 1848. 



Lebert received from M. Louis some pus, of a thick, almost 

 gelatinous consistency, which had been obtained from an abscess of 

 the thoracic wall in a man aged fifty. The patient had been attacked 

 four months previously by a pulmonary affection, which was 

 suspected by M. Louis to be cancerous in nature. The pus contained 

 a very considerable number of little spherical bodies of a slightly 

 greenish-yellow colour, about the size of a pin's head. They 

 could be readily crushed between two strips of glass, and on 

 examination with a power of fifty diameters two elements could be 

 distinguished : a soft connective substance, and many hard, narrow, 

 wedge-shaped corpuscles, arranged in a radiating manner. Under 

 a high power these bodies were observed to be -Jg- to j\^ of an inch 

 in length, -j^^ in width at the base, and ^-J^ in width at the 

 apex. Some of these corpuscles were regular, while others showed 

 one or two constrictions, with intermediate flask-shaped swellings. 

 Lebert tested these structures with reagents, with the following 

 results. The bodies were found to remain unaltered by concentrated 

 mineral acids. Acetic acid freed them . from foreign elements 

 adhering to their surface. Solution of caustic potash did not affect 

 them if used cold, but a boiling solution reduced the cuneiform 

 structures to a fine greyish powder without dissolving them. Ether, 

 alcohol, and chloroform had no effect upon them when used either 

 hot or cold. Solution of potash, in which these bodies had been 

 heated, mixed with a solution of sulphate of copper and brought to 

 boiling point, did not offer any uniform red colour, which would 

 have been the case if they had contained albumin. Thus, the chief 

 chemical characters of albuminous and fatty substances were 

 wanting, and they resembled chitine in their behaviour to reagents. 



