278 BACTEBIOLOGY 



when the plasma is peptonised in a short time, and the 

 bacteria remain well preserved. 



Influenza bacillus.— Babes, Canon, Pfeiffer, and Kitasato 

 believe the exciting cause of influenza to be very diminutive 

 rods which can be detected in the blood of persons suffering 

 from the disease. They lie in part within the white cor- 

 puscles, and often appear ranked with one another in chains 

 of three or four. In order to detect them, Canon lays the 

 cover-glass preparation, after it has been dried by the air, 

 in alcohol for five minutes, and stains it for from three to 

 six hours in Chenzynski's solution of methyl blue and eosine, 

 rinses it in water, allows it to dry, and mounts in Canada 

 balsam. By this process the red blood-corpuscles are 



Influenza bacillus completely 

 stained 



Ked corpuscles 



Influenza bacillus stained at the extremities 



Fig. 97. — Influenza Bacilli in Human Blood. (From an original 

 preparation by Canon.) 



stained red, the white corpuscles and bacilli blue (fig. 97). 

 Chenzynski's solution consists of 40 grams concentrated 

 aqueous solution of methyl blue, 20 grams of a half per 

 cent, solution of eosine in 70 per cent, alcohol, and 40 grams 

 water. 



Upon glycerine agar solidified in a slanting position 

 there develop at incubation temperature very small droplets 

 of the transparency of water, — so small, in fact, as to be 

 scarcely perceptible unless magnified by a lens, — which 

 have no tendency to coalesce. Scanty white turbidities 

 form in bouillon in the first twenty-four hours, and sink to 

 the bottom, leaving the supernatant liquid clear. 



Bacillus endocarditis capsulatus. — In a thrombus in the 

 cardiac auricle of a person who had died of endocarditis, 



