656 THEORY OF THE ACTION OF BACTERIA IN ANTHRAX. 
quantity of them in their sinus, which augmented with the 
age of the rupture. 
These three cases are easily interpreted; they are reducible, 
in fact, to one. The mode of action of the bacteria is always 
the same. Take the first (that of inoculation) as a typical 
case. 
When an animal has been inoculated, from that moment 
until its death it constantly show’s the presence of bacteria 
in one or other parts of its economy—not latent bacteria in 
the state of the germ, but entire and articulated, and visible 
to the microscope. They are always found in the connective 
tissue adjacent to the inoculated spot, and their number is 
greater in proportion as the period of inoculation is distant 
from that of observation. The infiltration or oedema which 
they provoke is propagated in the direction of the lymphatics 
which collect and convey them to the ganglion. They pene¬ 
trate this organ, as do all finely pulverised solid substances, 
as red-lead injected under the skin and tattoo powders; I 
have found them in considerable numbers (about ten in the 
field of the microscope), five hours after an inoculation has 
been made, at two centimetres distance from an axillary 
ganglion, in the pulp of this ganglion. Once in a ganglion 
they multiply, produce inflammation, and a more ready dis¬ 
charge of the substances inclosed in the lymphatic sinus; 
their multiplication by elongation is also a mode of progres¬ 
sion; they finally issue forth through the efferent vessels and 
reach the following ganglion, or rather the blood-vessels, 
where they multiply rapidly and where they remain. 
From the instant that the bacteria penetrate into the blood 
(by taking the blood of a rabbit inoculated 1\ hours pre¬ 
viously from three punctures made in the inside surface of 
each fore-leg, and injecting fifteen drops of it in the jugular 
of another rabbit, I caused the death of the latter) the 
phenomena are as though the injection had been made in 
the vessels, that is, as in the second case, allowance being 
made for the parasites constantly supplied by the ganglia 
which were the first receptacles. 
Finally, in the case in w r hich vascular ruptures supervene 
after the penetration of the bacteria into the blood, each rup¬ 
ture lets a greater or less number of bacteria escape, which 
there act as true, deep inoculations, which are followed by 
the same disorders as in subcutaneous inoculation, that is to 
say, infiltration, penetration into the ganglia, and return to 
the blood. But the disorders in this case are so numerous 
and severe that the animal dies before the capillary emboli 
are formed. 
