FERMENTATION AND DISEASE. 151 



stance to a variety of conditions. He permitted the dried blood to 

 assume the form of dust; wetted this dust, allowed it to dry again, 

 permitted it to remain for an indefinite time in the midst of putrefy- 

 ing matter, and subjected it to various other tests. After keeping 

 the spore-charged blood which had been treated in this fashion for 

 four years, he inoculated a number of mice with it, and found its 

 action as fatal as that of blood fresh from the veins of an animal suf- 

 fering from splenic fever. There was no single escape from death 

 after inoculation by this deadly contagium. Uncounted millions of 

 these spores are developed in the body of every animal which has 

 died of splenic fever, and every spore of these millions is competent 

 to produce the disease. The name of this formidable parasite is Ba- 

 cillus anthracis. 1 



Now, the very first step toward the extirpation of these contagia 

 is the knowledge of their nature ; and the knowledge brought to us 

 by Dr. Koch will render as certain the stamping out of splenic fever 

 as the stoppage of the plague of pebriae by the researches of Pasteur. 

 One small item of statistics will show what this implies. In the sin- 

 gle district of Novgorod in Russia, between the years 1867 and 1870, 

 over 56,000 cases of death by splenic fever, among horses, cows, and 

 sheep, were recorded. But its ravages did not confine themselves to 

 the animal world, for, daring the time and in the district referred to, 

 528 human beings perished in the agonies of the same disease. 



A description of the fever will help you to come to a right decision 

 on the point which I wish to submit to your consideration. "An 

 animal," says Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, "which perhaps for the previous 

 day has declined food and shown, signs of general disturbance, begins 

 to shudder and to have twitches of the muscles of the back, and soon 

 after becomes weak and listless. In the mean time the respiration 

 becomes frequent and often difficult, and the temperature rises to 

 three or four degrees above the normal ; but soon convulsions, 

 affecting chiefly the muscles of the back and loins, usher in the final 

 collapse, of which the progress is marked by complete loss of power 

 of moving the trunk or extremities, diminution of temperature, mucous 

 and sanguinolent alvine evacuations, and similar discharges from the 

 mouth and nose." In a single district of Russia, as above remarked, 

 56,000 horses, cows, and sheep, and 528 men and women, perished in 

 this way during a period of two or three years. What the annual 

 fatality is throughout Europe I have no means of knowing. Doubt- 

 less it must be very- great.. The question, then, w r hich I wish to 

 submit to your judgment is this: Is the knowledge which reveals 



1 To produce its characteristic effects the contagium of splenic fever must enter the 

 blood. The virulently-infective spleen of a diseased animal may be eaten with impunity 

 by mice. On the other hand, the disease refuses to be communicated by inoculation to 

 dogs, partridges, or sparrows. In their blood Bacillus anthracis ceases to act as a fer- 

 ment. 



