376 TIMOTHY RICHARDS LEWIS. 



The symptoms induced by such inoculatiou are frequently so very 

 like those witnessed in splenic fever that it is often impossible 

 satisfactorily to distinguish them. There is, however, this 

 marked distinction, namely, that whereas the presence of organ- 

 isms in the blood before death is, to a greater or less extent, the 

 rule, in what is known as charbon, it is the exception in septic 

 poisoning. The fluid exuded into the peritoneal cavity, and 

 frequently also into the pericardial sac, is peculiarly prone to give 

 rise to the development of various forms of fission-fungi, and the 

 abundance with which they are sometimes found very shortly 

 after death has given rise to the doctrine that they were the 

 initiatory agencies by which the fatal results were produced. 



The publication of Panum's experiments, which went to show 

 that the active morbid principle in such fluids could not by any 

 possibility be vitalised, served for a time to diminish the popu- 

 larity of such views, but they have since been revived again and 

 again, and never with a greater show of circumstantiality than 

 has recently been the case in a paper submitted by MM. Pasteur 

 and Joubert before the French Academy. This paper, notwith- 

 standing that it exceeded the prescribed length, was, on account 

 of the importance attached to it by the Academy, published in 

 extenso? 



The paper deals in the first place with M. Berths experiments, 

 and explains the discrepancies between M. Bert and M. Davaine^s 

 results in connection with charbon-blood, as already described. 

 But it goes further than this. It will be recollected that the 

 toxic material submitted to experiments by M. Bert did not give 

 rise to bacilli in the blood, although its virulent properties were 

 most marked, and the possibility of inoculating the disease from 

 animal to animal without bacilli was quite as manifest as in 

 charbon-fluid crowded with them. Similar results have been 

 published by many observers ; for instance, MM. Jaillard and 

 Laplat did so very soon after Dr. Davaine^s paper was read in 

 1863, and formulated their conclusion in this wise : (1) charbon 

 is not a parasitic disease; (2) the presence ofbacteridia is to be 

 considered as an epi- phenomenon, and not as a cause; and (3) 

 that the fewer bacteridia the blood in sang de rate contains, the 

 more virulent it is. It thus became common to hear of cases 

 of charbon with, and cases without, bacteridia. 



Davaine has also shown that the virulent properties of the virus 

 of septicaemia manifest a marked increase when transferred from 

 animal to animal. -It had been found that after twenty-five such 

 successive inoculations, a milhonth, and even a billionth or 



tliat death resulted with pretty much the same symptoms in both cases. — 

 MM. Coze aud Teltz iu ' Les Maladies IntVctietises,' p. 5S, 1S72. 

 1 ' Comptes Kendus,' t. Ixxxv, p. 101, 16th July, 1877. 



