Report on an Inquiry into Prevention of Splenic Fever, Sfc. 273 
all the post-mortem appearances of anthrax, in from forty to sixty 
hours. 
While the cultivation of the bacillus was being conducted in 
the grains and hay infusions, some pond-water, containing a 
considerable amount of organic matter and lime-salts, was tried 
as a cultivating fluid, but failed. The pond-water was treated 
in exactly the same manner as the other cultivating fluids, and 
inoculated with anthrax blood which was known to be active ; 
but at the end of two days, when examined, it was found to 
contain a variety of organisms, and proved inactive when in- 
jected into the cellular tissue of a guinea-pig. 
A number of cultivations were conducted in fresh aqueous 
humour, for the purpose of keeping up a supply of infecting 
material. This was found a less troublesome and expensive 
method than the inoculation of a series of guinea-pigs. 
In all these cultivation-experiments a portion of the culti- 
vating fluid was sealed up in a tube without the addition of any 
anthrax blood, and kept along with the inoculated tubes, and 
when they were used for the inoculations one animal- was also 
inoculated with the cultivating fluid alone, and in no case did 
it produce more than a slight local effect. 
In the course of these experiments several failures had to be 
recorded, where the liquid supposed to contain the active anthrax 
poison failed to produce any effect in the inoculated animals ; 
but in all such failures it was found that there were other organ- 
isms present, and these were also found in the tube used for the 
check-experiment, proving that there had been some contamina- 
tion of the whole liquid during preparation. 
XVI. — Report on an Inquiry into the Nature, Causes, and Pre- 
vention of Splenic Fever, Quarter-Evil and Allied Diseases^ 
made at the Brown Institution. By W. S. Greenfield, 
M.D., F.R.C.P., Professor - Superintendent of the Brown 
Institution. 
The investigations which form the subject of this Report have 
been carried on during the past year in continuation of those 
made in the previous year by Professor Burdon Sanderson and 
Mr. Duguid. I have, however, extended the scope of the in- 
quiry, and have taken up, in addition to splenic fever, the 
disease of cattle known as quarter-evil, and the diseases of 
horses known as Cape horse-sickness and Loodiana fever. 
Both in the experimental and clinical work I have been 
VOL. XVI. — S. S. T 
