FUSIFORM ANAEROBIC BACILLI 



457 



there is said to be more formation of gas in the tissues. Babbits are 

 more resistant to this disease, whilst they are comparatively suscep- 

 tible to malignant oadenia. As in the case of tetanus, inoculation with 

 living spores which have been deprived of adherent toxin by heat does 

 not produce the disease. A toxin can be separated by filtration from 

 cultures of bouillon containing 5 per cent, glucose and a thick emulsion of 

 sterile calcium carbonate. It is fairly resistant to heat, withstanding 

 two hours at 70-75° C. without being destroyed, and it is also very rapid 

 in its action, being capable in appropriate dose of killing a. horse in five 

 minutes. It is to be noted as an important fact, that while freshly 

 isolated cultures possess a high degree of virulence they may have little 

 capacity for toxin production in vitro. Grassberger and Schattenfroh 

 state that there may be an 

 antagonism between maxi- 

 mum virulence and maxi- 

 mum toxin production. One 

 of the properties of the toxin 

 is said to be a capacity for 

 killing leucocytes. 



The disease is one against 

 which immunity can be pro- 

 duced in various ways, and 

 methods of preventive in- 

 oculation have been adopted 

 in the case of animals liable 

 to suffer from it. This sub- 

 ject was specially worked out 

 by Arloing, Cornevin, and 

 Thomas, and later by others. 

 Immunity may be produced 

 by injection (especially by 

 the intravenous and intra- 

 peritoneal routes) with a 

 non-fatal dose of the virus 

 (i.e., the oedematous fluid 

 found in the tissues of affected 

 animals and which contains 



the bacilli), or by injection with larger quantities of the virus attenuated 

 by heat, drying,' etc. It can be produced also by cultures attenuated by 

 heat and by tfee products of the bacilli obtained by filtration of cultures. 

 An antitoxin has been produced against the toxins of the bacillus, and 

 a method of protection in which the action of this antitoxin is combined 

 with that of the virus has been used (c/. Anthrax, p. 349). The anti- 

 toxin is said to increase the chemiotactic properties of the leucocytes. 



Fig. 133. — Bacillus of quarter-evil, showin 

 spores. From a culture in glucose agar, 

 incubated for three days at 37° C. 

 Stained with weak carbol-fuchsin. x 1000. 



Fusiform Anaerobic Bacilli Pathogenic to Man. 



Babes in 1884 described organisms of this type in a 

 diphtheria-like affection of the fauces, and since that time the 

 presence of similar organisms has been noted in necrotic inflam- 

 mations, ulcerative stomatitis, noma, and like affections. They 

 have also been found in pulmonary lesions and in abscesses in 

 other parts of the body ; in these the pus is very foul -smelling. 



