anthrax: pollender, brauell, delafond 235 



say, the animals which showed them in their blood 

 during life had anthrax without question, and were 

 certain to die in the near future, but they might also 

 die of anthrax without containing the bacteridia. 



The reaction against these retrograde ideas was set 

 on foot by Delafond, who pointed out the confusion 

 made by Brauell and even by Pollender between the 

 bacteridia of anthrax and the harmless bacteria of putre- 

 faction: because in proportion as the second develop, 

 the first disappear. 



Delafond goes further. He seeks to prove the vege- 

 table nature of the anthrax bacteridia by subjecting 

 them to culture experiments. He exposed the anthrax 

 blood in open flasks to the air at a suitable temperature. 

 After 4 or 5 days, the short rods in the blood had in- 

 creased and doubled or tripled their length, and they 

 quadrupled or quintupled it after 8 or 10 days. This 

 well demonstrated that the bacilli were living. Delafond 

 even tried to push the growth to its completion to see 

 it arrive, as he says, at the spore or seed. These words 

 spore and seed had evidently for him not the precise 

 meaning which they have since acquired, but they do 

 honor to his perspicacity, and it is curious to see them 

 appear in connection with bacteridia, in a memoir of 1860. 



To sum up then, for those who kept au courant with 

 the question, a connection between the bacteridia of 

 Rayer and the development of the disease of anthrax or 

 sang de rate, although still obscure, was probable from 

 the proofs and the culture experiments of Delafond. 

 But it is not with such a feeble array of facts that an 

 idea can enter into the domain of science, especially 

 when it finds therein minds prejudiced against it. 

 "What is it worth to us," one might have said at this 

 epoch, "this new etiological doctrine? Is there not 

 something strange about it? Can one imagine the 



