Anthrax. 243 



firmly or at all. The red globules are crenated or otherwise dis- 

 torted, adhere to each other in irregular masses, and have parted 

 with much of their haemoglobin which diffused in the serum 

 stains the intima of the blood vessels and other white tissues. 

 The leucocytes are relatively very much encreased. The bacteria 

 are easily found in the intervals between the globules. The heart 

 is often soft, discolored, as it were parboiled, with the endocardium 

 deeply stained and the contained blood dark and diffluent or 

 liquid. The liver is usually enlarged, softened, friable, and as 

 if parboiled, with many haemorrhagic patches. The spleen is 

 materially, often enormously enlarged, irregular in outline from 

 extreme engorgement with blood, and in exceptional cases even 

 ruptured. An encrease to two or three times the normal is 

 common. The bacilli are present in great numbers in the spleen, 

 alike in the pulp, in the blood vessels and in the trabeculse. 

 The lymph glands are almost always hypersemic, hypertrophied, 

 and softened, especially in the vicinity of the localizations of the 

 tissue lesions. They may be merely petechiated, or they may 

 seem like a mass of black blood, and under pressure may break 

 down readily into a sanguineous pulpy mass. I/ike the spleen 

 they are favorite centres for the accumulation of the bacilli. 

 The marked alterations in these glands will often indicate the 

 channel by which the infection entered the body. The serosse 

 are usually hypersemic, with many haemorrhagic points and even 

 extensive exudations, and they often enclose a sanguineous liquid 

 The hypersemia and points or patches of extravasation are to be 

 found in any part of the body in which the bacilli have been 

 colonized, thus they are common in the tongue, the throat, the 

 lungs, the stomach or bowels, the mesentery, the omentum, the 

 skin, the connective tissue, or the muscular system. There may 

 be bloody or gelatinoid exudation, but there are always the 

 capillary embolisms, by irregular masses of blood globules, and 

 bacilli. These embolisms, the arrest of haematosis and the de- 

 structive action of the toxins on the red globules go far to account 

 for the extreme fatality of the disease. 



Morbid poisons. Hoffa found in anthrax cultures a ptomain 

 which killed with anthrax symptoms. Hankin obtained a deadly 

 albumose which in small doses procured immunity. Brieger and 

 Fraenkel separated a toxalbumin, and Martin too, a protalbumose 



