364) TIMOTHY RICHARDS LEWIS. 



lieved to be communicable in other ways, are in reality the result of 

 a ferment of some kind, the various theories of the causation of the 

 fermentive processes have always proved an attractive subject of study 

 to the more thinking section of the medical profession. As already 

 stated, the physico-chemical theory of Berzelius, and subsequently 

 of Liebig and his followers, was very commonly accepted as fairly 

 sufficient in connection with the etiology of disease, so long as 

 it was favorably received by the majority of the chemists of the 

 time ; but latterly Schwann's views, as expounded and ampli- 

 fied by Pasteur and others, have undoubtedly taken the lead. 

 Probably no single incident has tended so much towards en- 

 listing the attention of the medical profession to it than the pub- 

 lication of the experiments of M. Davaine, which went to show 

 that minute organisms were, to a greater or less degree, constantly 

 present in the bodies of animals which had died of the disease 

 known as malignant pustulein man — the "Milzbrand" of Germany ; 

 the '' charbon " of cattle and pigs, and ''mal de rate'' of sheep, in 

 France. The terms "splenic fever" or "splenic apoplexy," 

 " anthracoid disease," &c., are commonly adopted in England 

 in describing the affection. Birch-Hirschfeld^ states that 

 the organisms found in this affection were first described by 

 Brauell in 1849 and by Pollender in 1857 ; but, undoubtedly, 

 it was M. Davaine's researches which were the means of draw- 

 ing serious public attention to the matter. In August, 1850, 

 M. Davaine, in conjunction with M. Rayer, published an account 

 of these organisms, describing them as minute filamentous bodies, 

 motionless, and about double the length of the diameter of a red 

 blood-corpuscle. M. Pasteur^ maintains that the time just men- 

 tioned represents the date of the first publication of the exist- 

 ence of these bodies in charbon, but this idea is manifestly 

 erroneous. 



Instigated thereto by the publication of M. Pasteur's re- 

 searches (which went to show that butyric fermentation was not, 

 as believed, due to an albuminoid body in process of spontaneous 

 decomposition, but to vibriones, which presented the greatest 

 resemblance to the "corps filiformes," found in the blood of 

 animals dying of charhon) M. Davaine returned to the subject 

 in 1863 and 1864. The organisms were at first considered by 

 M. Davaine to be bacteria ; but finding in certain cases that 

 the filaments or rods varied in length, he modified the name, 

 and they have consequently been, until lately, commonly desig- 

 nated bacteridia. At this period it was supposed that they 

 were more closely related to animals than to plants. He satis- 



1 Schmidt's ' Jahrbiicher,' Band clxvi, S. 205, 1875. 



2 " Etude suria maladie cliarhonneuse ;" par MM. Pasteur et Joubert. 

 •Comptes Reudus,' t. Ixxxiv, p. 900, 1877. 



