FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 553 



tal, of which the general group composes the affection known by the 

 terra septiccemia. The microscopic organisms in such a case poison the 

 animal, not only by the mere fact of their presence in the blood, but 

 besides and especially because they develop and propagate in it with 

 astonishing rapidity, in the same way that yeast reproduces itself in 

 barley-wort. But the most singular thing in these pathological fer- 

 mentations is the fact noted some years ago for the first time by MM. 

 Coze and Feltz, and the study of which M. Davaine took up last year. 

 Davaine demonstrates, by experiments made on rabbits and Guinea- 

 pigs, that one drop of blood, from an animal affected with septicaemia, 

 has the power of imparting the infection to another animal inoculated 

 with it, that a drop taken from the second can transmit the disease to 

 a third, and so on. Still more, very wonderfully, the poisoning power 

 of the blood of these animals increases with the degree of advance in 

 the series of inoculations. The culture of the virus heiglitens its ma- 

 leficent properties. This gradual increase of the virulent force is such 

 that, if we take a drop of blood from an animal representing the 

 twenty-fifth terra in a series of successive inoculations, and so dilute 

 this drop with water that a drop of the dilution corresponds to one 

 trillionth of the original drop, we get a liquid of which the smallest 

 quantity still displays mortal activity. These experiments of M. Da- 

 vaine, which exhibit the degree of venom as increasing in an inverse 

 ratio to the apparent quantity of the poison, have been repeated and 

 confirmed by several eminent physiologists, among others by M. Bou- 

 ley, and have produced a sensation which still continues in the schools 

 of physiology and medicine. Apart from the inherent difficulty of 

 forming a notion as to the influence of those infinitesimal doses, they 

 seemed to yield an argument of a kind to support the assertions of 

 homoeopathy. If the difficulty is real, though it may be got over, the 

 argument, we take leave to say, is worthless. Let us look at the diffi- 

 culty first. This drop which is still mortal, though representing only 

 an infinitely small fraction of the original quantity of poisonous mat- 

 ter to which it is distantly related, permits no corpuscle to be detected. 

 That is true, yet it contains the germs of them, and germs such in 

 number, size, and reproductive power, that nothing prevents thera from 

 breeding again indefinitely, in spite of all efforts tried to get rid of 

 them. The discussions that have just occurred in the x^cademy of 

 Medicine on this grave subject, almost at the same time that the ques- 

 tion of ferments was under debate in the Academy of Sciences, leave no 

 doubt as to the reality of this progressive breeding of virulent germs 

 by culture. But is this any argument for the homoeopathists ? None 

 whatever. They attribute curative effects to extremely small doses 

 of certain inorganic substances most evidently inert, which can in no 

 way reproduce themselves. If the virulent elements occasion disturb- 

 ances so profound in anim^ organisms, it is not by reason of their 

 extreme minuteness, but it is because they multiply with prodigious 



