DEVELOPMENT OF THE BACTERIA. 125 
bolic acid is sufficient to prevent all development 
of living beings. It is employed with success in 
anthrax, in the treatment of wounds, etc. 
§ 3.— REPRODUCTION OF THE BACTERIA. 
It is well established that the bacteria can mul- 
tiply by fission, and reproduce themselves also by 
the formation of endogenous spores. 
Fission. — The multiplication by fission consists 
in a transverse division of the cell. When a bac- 
terium has attained nearly double its ordinary 
length, we see, in the larger species, that the proto- 
plasm becomes clearer in the central portion, and a 
partition forms in the median line separating. the 
contained protoplasm into two portions. The par- 
tition, at first very delicate, becomes thicker, di- 
vides into two, and the two articles separate. 
This phenomenon is produced more or _ less 
quickly according to the nature of the medium, 
its richness in nutritive material, the temperature, 
etc. When the growth is rapid, the new cells form 
more quickly than they separate, and are arranged 
in chaplets. Very often we only find them in 
this form, in strings of two to four cells coupled 
together. In some forms the transverse division 
is preceded by constriction near the middle of the 
cell. Before the two new cells are separated, the 
bacterium in this case presents the appearance of 
a figure 8, and seems to be a simple cell swollen 
at the two extremities. 
