1882—1884 363 



fashion. It would be a great boon in pork-breeding countries, 

 where terrible ravages are made by the rouget (so called because 

 the animals die covered with red or purple blotches, already 

 developed during the fever which precedes death). In the 

 United States, over a million swine died of this disease in 1879 ; 

 it rages in England and in Germany. This year, it has 

 desolated the C6tes-du-Nord, the Poitou, and the departments 

 of the Khone Valley. I sent to M. Dumas yesterday a resume 

 in a few lines of our. results, to be read at to-day 's meeting. ' ^ 



Pasteur, once more in Paris, returned eagerly to his studies 

 on divers virus and on hydrophobia. If he was told that he 

 over-worked himself, he replied: **It would seem to me that I 

 was committing a theft if I were to let one day go by without 

 doing some work.'* But he was again disturbed in the work 

 he enjoyed by the contradictions of his opponents. 



Koch's reply arrived soon after the Bollene episode. The 

 German scientist had modified his views to a certain extent; 

 instead of denying the attenuation of virus as in 1881, he now 

 proclaimed it as a discovery of the first order. But he did not 

 believe much, he said, in the practical results of the vaccination 

 of charbon. 



Pasteur put forward, in response, a report from the veterinary 

 surgeon Boutet to the Chartres Veterinary and Agricultural 

 School, made in the preceding October. The sheep vaccinated 

 in Eure et Loir during the last year formed a total of 79,392. 

 Instead of a mortality which had been more than nine per cent. 

 on the average in the last ten years, the mortality had only 

 been 518 sheep, much less than one per cent; 5,700 sheep had 

 therefore been preserved by vaccination. Amongst cattle 4,562 

 animals had been vaccinated; out of a similar number 300 

 usually died every year. Since vaccination, only eleven cows 

 had died. 



Such results appear to us convincing," wrote M. Boutet. 



If our cultivators of the Beauce understand their own interest, 

 splenic fever and malignant pustules will soon remain a mere 

 memory, for charbon diseases never are spontaneous, and, by 

 preventing the death of their cattle by vaccination, they will 

 destroy all possibility of propagation of that terrible disease, 

 which will in consequence entirely disappear." 



Koch continued to smile at the discovery on the earthworms' 

 action in the etiolog^^ of anthrax. **You are mistaken, Sir," 

 replied Pasteur. *'You are again preparing for yourself a 



(I 



