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blood of the heart, in the lungs, liver, spleen, &c. As the post mortem examination was made eleven hours after death, I had still doubts about the true significance of what I found; I therefore made a cultivation and inoculated a mouse from a small piece of the spleen. On the same day I took, with all due precautions, some blood from the finger tips of a patient who had the disease in a very bad form, with a temperature of 40.5° C., swelling of the axillary glands, &c. Under the microscope I found bacilli with capsules, the poles of which were stained much deeper with aniline dyes than the middle part; this gives them a great likeness to the bacilli of chicken cholera (Bacillus Cholera Gallinarum). On the next day, all the serum cultivations which were prepared in the incubator from the different organs of the body and of blood from the finger tips, showed a growth of micro-organisms, which, under the microscope, were not to be distinguished from those which we found in the blood and in the interior of the bubo at the first post mortem examination. The bacilli differed only by being a little longer and staining easier in the middle than those taken from the blood. With these cultivations I inoculated subcutaneously mice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, and pigeons.
The mice, which were inoculated on the first day with a piece of spleen and some blood from the finger tips, died in two days' time, and at the post mortem examination upon them, I found œdema round the place of inoculation, the same bacilli in the blood, in the internal organs, and in the œdematous part around the place of inoculation.
All animals which had been inoculated with the cultivations (pigeons excepted) died after periods extending from 1 to 4 days, according to the size of the animal. The same state of the organs after death and the same bacteriological observations always obtained as in the case of the mice previously referred to. I propose to give further details about my experiments on animals at a later time.
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Every day I took blood from many plague patients and examined it, and almost every time I found the bacilli as above described, sometimes in great numbers, sometimes only few in number, so that many glass slides had to be examined to find good specimens.
On the other hand these same bacilli were to be found at every post mortem examination (of which we had upwards of fifteen), in great quantity, in the bubonic swellings, in the spleen, the lungs, the liver, in the blood contained in the heart, in the brain, intestines, in fact in all internal organs without exception—and every cultivation from any particle of these parts invariably produced the same bacilli.
Suppose the contents of a bubo or a small piece of the spleen is rubbed on the cover glass and the latter, after having been stained, is examined under the microscope (one-twelfth inch oil immersion Zeiss) Bacilli will be discovered in the form found in pure cultivation (Reinkultur). In the spleen especially the bacilli are aggregated in heaps. Bacilli from bubonic swellings and from other internal organs are more easily stained with aniline dyes in their middle part than those taken from the blood, but any serum cultivation prepared from them produces the same form of bacillus.
Bacilli from
In any case where cultivations are prepared from parts of any internal organs or from the blood taken from the finger tips, with careful observation of all due precautions, pure cultivations (Reinkultur) of one and the same bacillus are always obtained, therefore the most intimate connection must exist between the bacillus and the disease.
Full particulars about the observations at the post mortem examinations will be given later on by my colleague Professor Aoyama; generally it may be said that the parts in the neighbourhood of the bubo are œdematous, of a colour between black and red, infiltrated with gelatinous exudation, and that the spleen is enlarged. Both phenomena are to be found in inoculated
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