294 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA.

The lymphatic glands are usually enlarged ; the adrenals
are also enlarged, and, in cases into which the live bacilli
have been injected, are hemorrhagic.

Sometimes the bacilli themselves are present in the
internal organs, and even in the blood, but generally this
is not the case.

It might be argued, from the different clinical pictures
presented by the disease as it occurs in man and in
animals, that they were not expressions of the same
thing. A careful study, however, together with the evi-
dences adduced by Roux and Yersin, who found that
when the bacilli were introduced into the trachea of
animals opened by operation a typical false membrane
was produced, and that diphtheritic palsy often followed,
and of hundreds of investigators, who find the bacilli
constantly present in the disease as it occurs in man,
must satisfy us that the doubt of the etiological role of
the bacillus rests on a very slight foundation.

All possible skepticism of the specificity of the bacillus
on my part was dispelled by an accidental infection that
kept me housed for three weeks during the busiest season
of the year. Without having been exposed to any known
diphtheria contagion, while experimenting in the labora-
tory, a living virulent culture of the diphtheria bacillus
was drawn into a pipette and accidentally entered my
mouth. Through carelessness no precautions were taken
to prevent serious consequences, and as a result of the
accident, two days later, my throat was full of typical
pseudomembrane which private and Health Board bac-
teriological examinations showed contained pure cultures
of the Klebs-Loffler bacilli.

One reason for skepticism in this particular is the
supposed existence of a pseudodiphtheria bacillus, which
has so many points in common with the real diphtheria
bacillus that it is difficult to distinguish between them.
We have, however, come to regard this pseudobacillus as
an attenuated form of the real bacillus. The chief points
of difference between the bacilli are that the pseudo-