NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 
293 
horse which had died rapidly of malignant pustular fever. The 
blood was received sixty hours after the death of the horse, and its 
state of preservation was such as to enable the author to affirm that it 
had never contained bacteria. A rabbit was at once inoculated by two 
punctures in the ears, which died in twenty-four hours afterwards, no 
bacteria being anywhere found. A second rabbit was then inoculated, 
which died in thirteen to fourteen hours, and it was in the latter that 
the new vibrion was discovered. Fifty-four other animals were 
subsequently inoculated, with the same results. When the blood 
was examined under the microscope with a power of 500 to 800 
diameters, a great number of extremely small vibrions were seen, 
spherical or slightly oval, of very little refracting power (which 
makes it difficult to distinguish them in the coloured serum), single 
or in pairs, never three in a chain. Their dimensions vary little, 
being *0004 mm. in thickness, and *0005 mm. to *001 mm. long, 
the latter dimension attained only by vibrions which have just 
separated. Their only movements are feeble and slow, which 
clearly distinguishes them from Brownian movements. Whilst 
very numerous in the blood (five to ten to a globule), they exist 
in immense quantities in the lymphatic ganglions, and swarm in 
the oedema at the point inoculated. They are found in all the tissues 
outside the vessels, and in all the fluids — the humours of the eye, the 
serous fluids, and the urine. When the epiploon is examined with a 
strong power, they are clearly distinguished in the interior of the 
vessels in the form of a mass of regular granulations which often 
occupy the whole breadth of the capillaries, and stand out in relief at 
their optic margin. 
All the fluids can be inoculated in the same way as the blood — 
inoculation of the aqueous humour, the urine, and the chyme kills 
the animals in twelve hours. The disease is not only contagious 
by direct inoculation, it is equally so by the alimentary canal, 
and perhaps also by the respiratory passages. Three rabbits died 
in eighteen to twenty-four hours after having eaten oats soaked in the 
infected blood. Excrement powdered and mixed with the food killed 
two rabbits out of six who had such food on one occasion. Two 
other vigorous rabbits died the next day, after having passed one 
night with two inoculated ones, and three adult rabbits in adjoining 
boxes died in the same way without any direct contact. 
M. Toussaint cultivated the vibrions by M. Pasteur’s method, and 
under the microscope in the gas and warm chamber of M. Panvier, 
and was able to establish that in two hours and a half a single one 
had produced twenty-two. The multiplication took place by scission 
as soon as the vibrion had doubled in breadth. Filaments analogous 
to those of the bacteria were never formed. They multiplied more 
rapidly at the sides next to the air-groove than in the middle of the 
preparation. 
Contact with air or pure oxygen in a moist chamber for twenty- 
four hours preserved a layer of blood of ^ mm. in thickness in full 
activity. In tubes free of air and sealed, the blood lost its activity at 
the end of ten days. Putrefaction destroys the vibrion, but much 
more slowly than the bacteria. 
