94 THE FLOATING-MATTER OF THE AIR 



supporter is able to produce ; and accordingly Dr. 

 Bastian appeals to the law and testimony of experiment 

 as demonstrating the soundness of his view. He seems 

 quite aware of the gravity of the matter in hand ; this 

 is his deliberate and almost solemn appeal : — ' With the 

 view of settling these questions, therefore, we may 

 carefully prepare an infusion from some animal tissue, 

 be it muscle, kidney, or liver ; we may place it in a 

 flask whose neck is drawn out and narrowed in the blow- 

 pipe-flame, we may boil the fluid, seal the vessel during 

 ebullition, and, keeping it in a warm place, may await 

 the result, as I have often done. After a variable time 

 the previously neated fluid within the hermetically 

 sealed flask swarms more or less plentifully with Bacteria 

 and allied organisms — even though the fluids have been 

 so much degraded in quality by exposure to the tempera- 

 ture of 212° Fahr., and have thereby, in all probability, 

 been rendered far less prone to engender independent 

 living units than the unheated fluids in the tissuefs 

 would be.' ' 



We have here, to use the words of Dr. Bastian, ' a 

 question lying at the root of the pathology of the most 

 important and most fatal class of diseases to which the 

 human race is liable.' Let us now examine his settle- 

 ment of the question, as described by himself in the 

 foregoing extract. 



§ 22. Experiments ivith Hermetically-sealed Vessels. 



Experiments with hermetically-sealed tubes were 

 begun by me on the 5th of October, 1875. The shape 

 of the tubes after sealing is represented in fig. 6. Each 

 of them contained about an ounce of liquid. They 



' Transactions of the Pathological Society of London, 1875, 

 p. 272. 



