anthrax: pollender, brauell, delafond 233 



III 

 ANTHRAX: POLLENDER, BRAUELL, DELAFOND 



The history of this bacteridium was already quite 

 ancient; it began in 1850. It was at this time that 

 Rayer, studying at Chartres the anthrax of horned 

 cattle with the aid of Davaine, had seen it in the form 

 of little rods in the blood of dead animals (Fig. 20), 

 but without comprehending its importance. In 1855, 

 Pollender had seen it again, had noted, like Rayer, the 

 agglutinated condition of the red blood-corpuscles in 

 the anthrax blood, and the considerable number of 

 leucocytes which were observed along with it. In addi- 

 tion, by reactions under the microscope, he had estab- 

 lished that the little rods found in this blood were not 

 filaments of fibrin, but behaved on the contrary like 

 vegetation. The principal interest of his communi- 

 cation respecting them centers in the fact that he asked 

 what they signified. Are they the infectious matter 

 itself? Are they only the carriers of this matter? Or, 

 have they nothing to do with it? We should say to-day: 

 Are they the infectious agent, do they convey this agent, 

 or is it necessary to seek it elsewhere? This is the 

 question that Pollender asked himself with much per- 

 spicacity, and which it required 30 years to settle. 



Science is like a train in the hands of a crew, which, 

 after having gone forward, sometimes goes backward. 

 Scarcely had Pollender well set forth the question than 

 Brauell befogged it by confusing the bacteridia of an- 

 thrax, considered up to this moment as sufficiently spe- 

 cific, with the harmless bacteria of putrefaction, which 

 led him quite naturally to discover them in various 

 diseases, and consequently to sever them from anthrax. 

 At most he admits that, in this disease, the harmless 



