REMARKS ON PATHOGENIC BACTERIA. 237 
specific one. That such is the case, I have proved as early as 
1878 and 1879, as will be seen by reading my reports to the Com- 
missioner of Agriculture. Nevertheless, M. Pasteur as late as last 
year, claims the discovery of the diplococci of swine plague as his. 
But so it goes, certain Frenchmen, and M. Pasteur, although other- 
wise a great man, is one of them, are ever ready to appropriate any 
convenient piece of literary or scientific property that is not closely 
guarded, or not kept under lock and key. 
In my investigations I made another observation, that is, the 
same pathogenic. bacteria may, under certain conditions and sur- 
roundings, be very malignant, and be producing disease in every 
instance, while under others they appear to be far less malignant, 
or even harmless. 
An abundance of proof that such is the case can be furnished. 
In the first place, it is a well-known fact that almost all epidemic 
and epizootic diseases, but particularly such as are unquestionably 
caused by bacteritic growths, are more malignant at one time, or in 
one year, than at other times or in other years, and cause more 
losses in one epidemy or epizooty as the case may be, than in 
another, that many persons or animals respectively, though much 
exposed to infections, remain exempt, or do not take the disease, 
although there can be hardly any doubt that while exposed, their 
organisms have taken up a larger or smaller number of pathogenic 
bacteria. Such—that in every epidemic some persons, and in 
every epizootic some animals, remained exempt—at least was 
the case in regard to all those infectious diseases that came 
under my observation, and I am sure, any practising physician 
will testify to the same fact. Proof, however, would be more 
definite, if the blood, etc., of persons or animals thus exposed, 
but not affected by disease, had been oftener subjected to a 
microscopic examination. 
Some time since Drs. Brown and Curtis, of this city (Chicago), 
attended a boy affected with tetanus. The boy had been fooling 
with the toy-pistol. Dr. Curtis examined the boy’s blood (taken 
from a puncture in the finger) and found numerous micrococci. 
The doctors thought they had made a discovery, and searched for 
the probable source of those micrococci. Near the house they 
found a stagnant pool of water, and Dr. Curtis, putting some of 
the water under the microscope, found in that water, apparently, 
the same micrococci, at least, as to size and form, as in the boy’s 
blood. The doctors, however, did not stop there in their investi- 
gation. Dr. Curtis further examined the blood of the boy's 
mother and sister, to all appearances perfectly healthy persons, and 
to his astonishment again found the same micrococci in consider- 
able numbers. Then Dr. Brown concluded the micrococci could 
not possibly be the cause of tetanus, for, he argued, if they were, 
