138 
D. E. SALMON. 
the areolar tissue and progresses slowly towards the lymphatic 
glands; when these are reached, its progress is arrested until the 
inflammation which it produces causes sufficient changes in the 
gland to allow it to pass ; when another gland is reached, the 
same process is repeated, and it is often a considerable time before 
the bacterium reaches the blood.* During this time the products 
formed by the bacteria are carried into the circulation, as well as 
an increased amount of waste products of the animal tissues 
caused by the inflammation of the lymphatic glands, by the in¬ 
crease of white corpuscles and by a general increase in the activ¬ 
ity of the bioplasm of the whole body. The occasional result of 
this increase of waste products, in nearly all contagious diseases, 
is death in the early stages from chemical poisoning ; it can hardly 
be doubted that in charbon death may occur either before, or, at 
least, very soon after the bacilli have reached the blood. 
It is further maintained by some, however, that blood in which 
the bacilli cannot be found may produce charbon by inoculation ; 
and that the disease so produced has all the characteristics of 
charbon, including the bacilli. From this it is argued that the 
bacteria are an epi-phenoinenon, having no connection with the 
virus, and being dependant upon the condition of the blood. 
Pasteur has given an explanation of this which is in the highest 
degree satisfactory. When there are but a few bacilli in each 
drop of blood, he says, it is extremely difficult to find them, for a 
drop pressed between the thin cover and the slide has a diameter 
of three-fourths of an inch, and as we must use a power of 500 
or 600 diameters, our field of vision is reduced to about 1-100 of 
an inch in diameter, giving in the drop, if I have calculated cor¬ 
rectly, 5,625 microscopic fields. It is, consequently, next to im¬ 
possible to say positively that there is not a single organism in 
tiie drop, if we rely upon microscopic examination alone. But 
Pasteur has demonstrated that whenever the inoculation of a 
drop of blood produces charbon, the cultivation of another drop 
* Report of Committee which adjudged the Br<5aut prize to G. Colin 
Compfes Rendus XCII, p. 599. 
H. Toussaint, Recherches Exp^rimentales sur la Maladie Charbonneuse 
