92 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
The animals inoculated while pregnant were dogs, rabbits, goats, and 
mice, and the sections were as a rule made so as to pass through wall of 
uterus, placenta, and foetal membranes. 
Ten animals were inoculated, and in half the number of instances the 
virus passed from mother to offspring. Considerable differences were 
detected in the various animals in the spread of the bacilli in the 
foetus, yet their intra-vascular position was everywhere clearly visiLle. 
Of all the organs the liver was most affected, and 6eemed to form a 
centre for the further dissemination of the bacilli. 
The conditions which influence the transference of the bacilli to the 
foetus seem to be numerous, such as unequal susceptibility, duration of 
the disease, dissimilarity of the structure in the placentas, differences in 
quality and quantity of inoculated virus, and also in the position selected 
for inoculation. 
The author seems disposed to regard the healthy placenta as a 
fairly effective barrier or filter against minute foreign bodies, such as 
micro-organisms, but admits that the placenta is penetrable by patho- 
genic microbes, an admission which seems quite countenanced by the 
result of his own experiments, for he shows that in 50 per cent, of 
the cases transmission of the living virus took place. 
Passage of Anthrax from Mother to Foetus.*— In the first series of 
experiments made by Dr. Latis, fifteen guinea-pigs were inoculated at 
various periods of gestation. It was found that in eight out of the fifteen 
cases a transference of the virus from the mother to the foetus had certainly 
taken place. The bacilli were always found in the maternal blood four to 
five hours before death, but in only two of the eight successful experiments 
were the bacilli found in the umbilical vein. Haemorrhages were 
never observed in the placenta. In certain places accumulations of 
bacilli were found in small blood-vessels, occasionally they were seen 
lying transversely in the wall of the vessel, and also between the cells 
of the decidua. It was supposed that the anthrax bacilli escaped from 
the vessels by diapedesis, and experiments to ascertain this were made 
on the mesentery of ten guinea-pigs inoculated with anthrax. The 
blood was examined from time to time during life, and the mesentery 
after death, the animals having been killed at various periods of in- 
fection. The author derived the impression that if there were only 
yery few bacilli in tbe blood, no vascular changes ensue ; if there were 
many, that a moderate number of leucocytes and a few red corpuscles 
emigrated from the vessels, and that this emigration became more marked 
as the severity of the infection increased. 
In the last stages, not only leucocytes and red corpuscles are found 
putside the vessels, but bacilli also. Kupture of the walls of the vessels 
was never perceived. 
Hence the author concludes, from a consideration of the phenomena 
observed in the mesentery under the placenta, that when the anthrax 
virus passes from mother to foetus, the transference is effected by 
diapedesis, and occurs after some change has taken place in the wall 
of the vessels. 
* Ziegler’s Beitrage zur Pathol Anat. u. Allgem. Pathol., x. p. 148. Sec Cen- 
tralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk , x. (1891) pp. 225-6. 
