EELATION OF PATHOGENIC TO SEPTIC BACTERIA. 7 



common hay bacillus into the Bacillus anthracis, Koch 

 (1. c, p. 26) maintains that what Buehner really had before him 

 in those cases in which he had animals die after the inocula- 

 tion with the hay bacillus cultivated in blood for many genera- 

 tions, was not anthrax bacillus, but the baccillus of malig- 

 nant oedema (Koch). I think Koch's criticism is very thorough 

 and has every probability for itself. I certainly should be 

 surprised to find that a cultivation in blood treated in 

 Buchner's manner (1. c, p. 405), viz. without any precaution 

 against accidental contamination, and which naturally would 

 undergo putrid changes, did not yield the oedema bacillus ; 

 this, when cultivated for several successive generations, as was 

 the case in Buchner's experiments, would at last yield a culti- 

 vation in which the oedema bacillus is the only organism 

 present. 



I now come to the most important research of this cycle, viz. 

 that of INI. Pasteur. A succinct summary of his results he 

 himself has given us in a remarkable address given during the 

 last International Medical Congress in London in August, 

 1881. This address has been reprinted, with a translation, as 

 a Parliamentary paper, under the title " Animal Inoculation." 

 It refers to the micrococcus of fowl cholera and to the 

 Bacillus anthracis. It is only the latter that interests us 

 here. By numerous previous observations M. Pasteur has 

 found that cultivating the Bacillus anthracis in chicken 

 broth at a temperature of 4£° and 43° C, the bacillus, al- 

 though vigorously growing in the shape of the characteristic 

 convolutions of threads, nevertheless does not form spores (p. 



10). 



" In a month or six weeks the culture dies ; that is to say, if 

 one impregnates with it fresh decoction, the latter is com- 

 pletely sterile. Up to that time life exists in the vessel 

 exposed to air and heat. If we examine the virulence of the 

 culture at the end of two days, four days, six days, eight days, 

 &c., it will be found that long before the death of the culture 

 the microbe has lost all virulence, although still cultivable. 

 Before this period it is found that the culture presents a series 



