1877—1879 293 



least difference; not only the blood, but the internal organs, 

 and notably the spleen, were affected in the same manner." 

 ... "It is a certainty to my mind," he wrote to Pasteur, 

 **that the contaminating agent has been the same in the three 

 cases, and that it was the bacteridium of what you call 

 anthrax." 



There was therefore no such thing as a leptothrix puerperalis. 

 And it was at a distance, without having seen the patient, that 

 Pasteur said: "That woman died of charbon." With an 

 honourable straightforwardness, M. Feltz wrote to the 

 Academic des Sciences relating the facts. 



"It is doubly regrettable," he concluded, "that I should not 

 have known charbon already last year, for, on the one hand, 

 I might have diagnosed the redoubtable complication presented 

 by the case, and, on the other hand, sought for the mode of 

 contamination, which at present escapes me almost com- 

 pletely." All he had been able to find was that the woman, a 

 charwoman, lived in a little room near a stable belonging to a 

 horse dealer. Many animals came there; the stable might 

 have contained diseased ones; M. Feltz had been unable to 

 ascertain the fact. "I must end," he added, "with thanks 

 to M. Pasteur for the great kindness he has shown me during 

 my intercourse with him. Thanks to him, I was able to con- 

 vince myself of the identity between the bacillus anthracis and 

 the bacteridium found in the blood of a woman who presented 

 all the symptoms of grave puerperal fever." 



At the time when that convincing episode was taking place, 

 other experiments equally precise were being undertaken con- 

 cerning splenic fever. The question was to discover whether it 

 would be possible to find germs of charbon in the earth of the 

 fields which had been contaminated purposelj'', fourteen months 

 before, by pouring culture liquids over it. It seemed beyond all 

 probability that those germs might be withdrawn and isolated 

 from the innumerable other microbes contained in the soil. It 

 was done, however; 500 grammes of earth were mixed with 

 water, and infinitesimal particles of it isolated. The spore of 

 the bacillus anthracis resists a temperature of 80° C. or 90° C, 

 which would kill any other microbe; those particles of earth 

 were accordingly raised to that degree of heat and then injected 

 into some guinea-pigs, several of which died of splenic fever. 

 It was therefore evident that docks were exposed to infection 

 merely by grazing over certain fields in that land of the Beauce. 



