THE MICROBES OF ANIMAL DISEASES. 769 



Babes and Havas found this bacillus in the human subject in 1881. 

 Experimental cultures have been made simultaneously in France and 

 Germany, and have given identical results. 



Bouchard, Capitan and Charrin made their cultures in neutralized 

 solutions of extract of meat, maintained at a temperature of 37. By 

 means of successive sowings, they have obtained the production of un- 

 mixed microbes, presenting no trace of the original liquid, and this 

 was done in vessels protected from air-germs. These cultures may be 

 carried to the eighth generation. Asses and horses inoculated with 

 liquid containing the microbes produced by this culture have died 

 with the lesions characteristic of glanders (glanderous tubercles in 

 the spleen, lungs, etc.). Cats and other animals which have been in- 

 oculated in the same way die with glanderous tubercles in the lym- 

 phatic glands and other organs. 



It follows from these experiments that the microbe which causes 

 this disease is always reproduced in the different culture-liquids with 

 its characteristic form and dimensions ; that uni- ungulates can be 

 inoculated with it, as well as man and other animals. In fact, this 

 microbe is the essential cause of the disease. 



We have already spoken of muscardine, a silk-worm's disease pro- 

 duced by a microscopic fungus ; two other diseases are caused by dis- 

 tinct microbes, of which we must shortly speak. In the silk-worm 

 nurseries, in which this disease prevails, the silk-worms which issue 

 from the eggs, technically called seed, are slowly and irregularly de- 

 veloped, so as to vary greatly in size. Many die young, and those 

 which survive the fourth molt shrink and shrivel away ; they can 

 hardly creep on to the heather to spin their cocoon, and produce 

 scarcely any silk. 



On an examination of the worms which have died of this disease, 

 De Quatrefages ascertained the presence of minute stains on the skin 

 and in the interior of the body, which he compared to a sprinkling of 

 black pepper ; hence the name pebrine. Under the microscope these 

 stains assume the form of small mobile granules like bacteria, which 

 Cornalia termed vibratile corpuscles, on account of their movements. 

 Finally, Osimo and Vittadini ascertained the existence of these cor- 

 puscles in the eggs, and consequently showed that the epidemic might 

 be averted by the sole use of healthy eggs, of which the soundness 

 should be established by microscopic examination. 



It was at about this date (1865) that Pasteur undertook the ex- 

 haustive study of pebrine ; but Bechamp was the first to pronounce 

 the disease parasitic, resembling muscardine in this respect, and caused 

 by the attacks of a microbe or microzyma, to adopt Bechamp's name 

 of which the germ or spore is derived from the air, at first attacking 

 the silk-worm from without, but multiplying in its interior, and devel- 

 oping with its growth, so that the infected moth is unable to lay its 

 eggs without depositing the spores of the microbe at the same time, 

 vol. xxix. 49 



