DAVAIXE 237 



All these objections are not wanting in force, and as 

 they favored idleness of mind and invited intellectual 

 repose, they were very much in vogue. To Davaine 

 belongs the honor of beginning again the struggle against 

 them. 



IV 

 DAVAINE 



After the discovery of the bacteridium, which Davaine 

 had made in 1850, with Rayer, he had paused for reflec- 

 tion. His was a very keen and discriminating mind. 

 He regarded science from the point of view of medicine. 

 The brief note by Pasteur in 1861 on the butyric ferment, 

 of which we have spoken, had revealed to him the exist- 

 ence of very active microscopic organisms morpholog- 

 ically similar to the anthrax bacillus and capable, by 

 means of their power of fermentation, of producing 

 effects out of proportion to their weight and volume. 

 Consequently, despite its small size, the anthrax bacil- 

 lus might easily cause the death of a large animal and 

 be guilty of all that was attributed to it. A singular 

 thing which we have difficulty in explaining to-day, 

 is the fact that while no one then refused to admit that 

 a thing as imperceptible as the virus of smallpox could 

 convey the disease and bring death to the individual 

 inoculated with it, because this virus seemed to derive 

 its energy from the creature into which it penetrated, 

 and to change only the modality of its life, all refused 

 to understand that the bacillus, an independent living 

 organism, could by its own activity, triumph over the 

 animal which it invaded. 



To Davaine belongs the credit of having seen farther 

 along this line than the men of his generation and of 



18 



