ANTISEPTIC SURGERY 165 



1,000,000,000. After ten such transfers the 

 amount of material originally present would be 

 diluted so that it would be like a drop in the ocean, 

 but Pasteur kept on diluting and diluting until he 

 had made forty successive transfers. Any material 

 associated with the original germs would have been 

 diluted until not an atom of it could on the average 

 be left in the final flask of the culture medium. 

 Yet Pasteur showed that a drop of this culture 

 injected into a rabbit or guinea pig would cause 

 the animal to die with symptoms of anthrax. 

 "Anthrax, therefore," said Pasteur, "is the disease 

 of the bacteridium, as trichinosis is the disease of 

 the trichina, as itch is the disease of the itch mite, 

 with this difference, moreover, that in anthrax the 

 parasite, in order to be seen, must be observed with 

 a microscope of high power of magnification." The 

 evidence that anthrax is caused by the bacillus is 

 of the same kind and is just as conclusive as the 

 evidence that trichinosis is caused by the trichina 

 or itch by the itch mite. 



Pasteur delighted in perfectly rigid, clean cut, 

 and demonstrative experiments, and in face of the 

 attacks on the germ theory, he took a peculiar 

 satisfaction in bringing forward arguments which 

 left his opponents no loop-hole by which they 



