PATHOGENIC ANABROBIC BACILLI. 587 
growth and liquefaction of the gelatin extend nearly to the sur- 
face. In agar stab cultures, in the incubating oven, develop- 
ment begins within a day or two and extends to within one 
finger’s breadth of the surface; considerable gas is evolved, and 
the cultures have a peculiar, acid, penetrating odor. Development 
is most rapid at 36° to 38° C., but may occur at a temperature of 16° 
to 18° C.—not lower than 14°. Spores are quickly formed in cul- 
tures kept in the incubating oven—not so quickly at the room tem- 
perature. These withstand a temperature of 80° C. maintained for 
an hour, but are killed in five minutes by a temperature of 100° C. 
(in steam). In the bodies of infected animals spores are not formed 
until after the death of the animal, at the end of twenty-four to forty- 
eight hours (Kitasato). 
The spores are destroyed by a five-per-cent solution of carbolic 
acid in ten hours, and the bacilli, in the absence of spores, in five 
minutes ; a 1:1,000 solution of mercuric chloride destroys the spores 
in two hours (Kitasato). According to Kitasato, certain shining 
bodies of irregular form, which stain readily with the aniline colors, 
are to be seen in the rods as they are found in the bloody serum from 
an animal recently dead ; but these are not spores, as some bacterio- 
logists have supposed. 
Pathogenests.—Cattle, which are immune against malignant 
cedema, are most subject to infection by the bacillus of symptomatic 
anthrax, and the disease produced by this anaérobic bacillus prevails 
almost entirely among them ; horses are not attacked spontaneously 
—1.e., by accidental infection—and when inoculated with a culture of 
this bacillus present only a limited local reaction. Swine, dogs, rab- 
bits, fowls, and pigeons have but slight susceptibility, but the re- 
searches of Arloing, Cornevin, and Thomas, and of Roger show that 
by the addition of a twenty-per-cent solution of lactic acid to a cul- 
ture its virulence is greatly increased, and animals which have but 
little susceptibility, like the rabbit or the mouse, succumb to such in- 
jections ; similar results were obtained by Roger by the simultaneous 
injection of sterilized or non-sterilized cultures of Bacillus prodigiosus 
or of Proteus vulgaris. 
Klein (1894) has obtained from the spleen of sheep a bacillus 
which corresponds with the bacillus of malignant cedema in every 
respect, except that it proved to be without pathogenic power—“a 
non-virulent variety of the Rauschbrand bacillus” (Klein), 
BACILLUS C2DEMATIS MALIGNI NO. 1 (Novy). 
Obtained by Novy (1894) from the subcutaneous cedema in guinea-pigs 
which were inoculated with a solution of milk-nuclein, which had been pre- 
pared from fresh casein. _ 
Morphology.—Bacilli with rounded ends, usually solitary, from 2.5 to 
