RELATION OF PATHOGENIC TO SEPTIC BACTEEIA. 9 



aid of anthracoid germs deposited in a culture which had been 

 preserved in my laboratory more than four years, that is to say, 

 from the 21st March, 1877. There was assuredly no doubt 

 about its virulence, since in 50 hours it killed i^5 sheep out of 

 25. Nevertheless, a commission of doctors, surgeons, and 

 veterinary surgeons of Chartres, prejudiced with the idea that 

 virus, obtained from infectious blood, must have a virulence 

 capable of defying the action of what I call cultures of virus, 

 instituted a comparison of the effects upon vaccinated sheep 

 and upon unvaccinated sheep of inoculation with the blood of 

 an animal which had died of splenic fever. The result was 

 identical with that obtained at Pouilly-le-Fort; absolute resist- 

 ance of the vaccinated, and death of the unvaccinated." 



I have hitherto had no experience with the inoculation of 

 sheep with cultivated Bacillus anthracis (but hope soon to 

 be able to gain some) ; and I cannot therefore say anything 

 about it, nor do I for one moment question the absolute reli- 

 ability of M. Pasteur's successful vaccination of sheep with 

 Bacillus anthracis, and the immunity thus conferred upon 

 them, altho gh no such uniform results were obtained by his 

 assistant when repeating M. Pasteur's experiments in Buda 

 Pesth, but what I will take the liberty of questioning is the 

 general application of these results by M. Pasteur and his fol- 

 lowers to anthrax in animals other than sheep, or to the other 

 infectious maladies. For 1 am able to show, that not only 

 does no such mitigation of activity on rodent animals take 

 place in the Bacillus anthracis wlien artificially cultivated 

 and precluded from forming spores, but that no immunity is 

 coi^ferred on rodent animals, if not succumbing to the effect of 

 such cultivated Bacillus anthracis. There are a number of 

 statements by M. Pasteur, such as the oxygen of the air being 

 the cause of the attenuation of the virulence; further, the 

 inability of the cultivated Bacillus anthracis to form spores 

 at a temperature of 42° and 43° C; then the assertion that the 

 attenuated virulence once obtained is transmitted to the next 

 cultivation, the accuracy of some of which my experience 

 obliges me to question, of others directly to contradict. 



