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IX 



THE SEPTIC VIBRIO 



This idea also shed a light over the past. We have 

 seen that MM. Leplat and Jaillard had contested the 

 interpretations of Davaine by showing that an animal 

 inoculated with putrid anthrax blood died quickly with 

 symptoms analogous to those of anthrax, but without 

 having bacteridia in the blood, a proof to them that the 

 presence of the bacteridium in anthrax was only an 

 epiphenomenon. To that, Davaine had replied that 

 the disease produced by Leplat and Jaillard was not 

 anthrax, but differed from it in the length of the incu- 

 bation period and in many other ways. He was right, 

 but exacting minds, and it is always necessary that there 

 should be such in science, were justified in finding his 

 reasons insufficient. It might be, after all, that the 

 disease produced by Leplat and Jaillard was the true 

 anthrax and Davaine's was an anthrax modified by 

 the presence of the bacteridium. The intervention of 

 this microbe might well change the symptoms, modify 

 the evolution of the disease, and permit it to attack 

 other species of animals. 



How was one to meet this objection, which was like 

 viewing the same facts through opposite ends of the 

 lorgnette? There would have been one way, viz., to dis- 

 cover the cause of Leplat and Jaillard's disease. But 

 in his attempt to do this Davaine was shipwrecked, in 

 spite of his efforts. He had found the anthrax bacillus 

 in the blood: it was in the blood that he searched ob- 

 stinately for the second disease but he found nothing 

 there. If it had occurred to him to examine the tissues 

 he might have found myriads of the organisms which he 

 sought. The abdominal serosity in particular is full 



