PrCPARATORY to RliSHARCn CaRF-HR 7^ 



ever, Pasteur's lack of pathological training stood in his way. 

 For instance, during tlic 1860's, while studying the butyric acid 

 ferment (1863) and later a disease of silkworms known as 

 flacherie, he had observed the formation of spores; but he was 

 not as prepared as Koch to study sporulation in anthrax. Koch 

 began to study the disease in 1876. He forced the rods of the 

 anthrax to produce spores and proved their fundamental signifi- 

 cance in the disease's etiology. By experiments, furthermore, he 

 proved the transmission of infection through spores in the earth 

 and the food of animals. ^'^ 



Pasteur, on the other hand, knew how to perform an indefinite 

 series of cultures, something which it is said ''- Koch as yet had 

 not learned to do. He proved that the virulence of anthrax be- 

 longs to the bacteridium and, examining the microbe's reaction to 

 the organism, brought forth proof of a bacterial secretion which 

 produces a symptom of the disease — agglutination and massing 

 together of the corpuscles of anthrax blood. Koch had realized 

 that the anthrax bacteridium is aerobic and, to survive, has to have 

 oxygen. ^'^ But he had not actually found anthrax spores in the 

 earth, nor did he know how long these spores live. Pasteur dis- 

 covered that anthrax spores are distributed by earthworms and, 

 moreover, could survive for many years where the conditions were 

 the slightest possible for bacterial growth. An analysis of the 

 comparative contributions to learning made by these two great 

 scientists might be extended over many pages. 



During the early 1880's, Erwin Smith, in his '" Index Rerum, ' 

 wrote of Pasteur in another connection. Concerning antiseptic 

 treatments for wound infections, he abstracted the substance of 

 three pages from Sternberg's translation of Magnin's The Bac- 

 teria. Monsieur Gucrin had caused 



many bad wounds [to heal] by keeping them closely covered with cotton 

 wadding. Following Pasteur, he attributed this to the power of batten 

 to strain out or hinder germs floating about in the air from gaining access 

 to the wounded surface. Lister had equal success ... by the use of 

 carbolic acid spray, and of dressing saturated with this acid. He attributed 

 his success to the antiseptic properties of the acid — thought it destroyed 



*" Pasteur, The history of a mind, op. tit., 241-244. 



*^° iJem, 250-255, " the first example introduced into science of a bacterial secre- 

 tion producing one of the symptoms of a disease." 



^''^ Idem, and pp. 286-287. Also, Smith, Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 17. 



