f>54 THEORY OF THE ACTION OF BACTERIA IN ANTHRAX. 
doubt, be cautious in their arrests of ill-users of horses in 
the Hammersmith district. 
INOCULABTL1TY OF TINEA TONSURANS ON THE LOWER 
ANIMALS. 
Dr. Shoemaker, in an account of an outbreak of 
ringworm among the children at a public institution in 
Philadelphia, gives a description of the effect of the appli¬ 
cation of scales from diseased patches to the bodies of cats. 
For three days he was not able to detect any change on the 
parts on which the scales were placed, but on the beginning 
of the fourth, a small meal-like spot was observed upon one, 
and on another the hairs began to fall out. By the fifth day 
the patches had attained the characteristic circular form, and 
the affection continued to spread rapidly, until spots the size 
of a large coin were almost denuded of hair. Scales from 
the patches of one of the cats were re-inoculated on a healthy 
portion of the scalp of one of the children, and thigh of 
another, with the effect of reproducing ringworm. A section 
of the skin of one of the cats was also made and examined 
microscopically. The parasite was observed among the 
scales of the horny layer of the epidermis, in the cutis on 
the hair shaft, while small abscesses were also to be seen in 
the rete mucosum and in the hair follicles. The parasite 
could not, however, be detected in the subcutaneous cellular 
tissue .—Edinburgh Medical Journal. 
THEORY OF THE ACTION OF BACTERIA IN ANTHRAX. 
M. Toussaint has recently called attention, in the Comptes 
Rendus , to the theory of the action of bacteria in Anthrax. In 
applying the data furnished by the experiments communicated 
to the Academy to the comparative study of the lesions which 
I have observed in different species of animals, I consider 
that it is possible to deduce from them a general theorv of 
the action of bacteria introduced into an organism. The 
following is a summary of the theory : 
Anthrax is due to the existence of a parasite which lives 
and is reproduced in the blood and fluids of living animals, 
which acts through its physical qualities, and through the 
substances which it secretes or exudes, or the formation of 
which it provokes; these substances are soluble, and possess 
inflammatory properties more or less intense according to the 
animals which nourish the bacteria. The difference in activity 
