1886.] 



MICEOSCOPICAL JOUKNAL. 



75 



upon the unsuspecting public with a 

 new niicrolie \vhich he has discovered, 

 and immediately the news is spread 

 abroad by the press, and the pub- 

 lished discovery, utterly without the 

 slightest foundation, which has per- 

 haps involved a few hours of super- 

 ficial observation, requires months of 

 arduous systematic labor before it can 

 be absolutely refuted. 



If men occupying positions as col- 

 lege professors coiu't notoriety in this 

 way, utterly regardless of the require- 

 ments of such work, or of their ovs^n 

 responsibility as students of science 

 to assist rather than retard the pro- 

 gress of scientific discovery, it is 

 proper that their pretensions should 

 be freely criticised. 



Those who are even slightly fa- 

 miliar with the literature relating to 

 microbes and their connection with 

 diseases will freely acknowledge that 

 M. Pasteur is a reasonably good au- 

 thority upon certain parts of this great 

 subject. Indeed there are very few 

 men who have worked as carefully 

 and thoroughly as M. Pasteur. One 

 of the results of M. Pasteur's work 

 has been the discovery of a method 

 of preventing the disease known in 

 France as rouger by inoculation. 

 Now, Dr. Julius Gerth, State Vet- 

 erinarian of Nebraska, obtained some 

 of M. Pasteur's vaccine last Octo- 

 ber, and in November he inoculated 

 twenty -six pigs with it. We will 

 not give the details of the experi- 

 ment ; suflSce it to say that after the 

 inoculation, microscopical investiga- 

 tions were made by Prof. Charles E. 

 Bessey, ' with the aid of the uni- 

 versity microscope, the only one in 

 this section of the countr}' with 

 which reliable scientific work can 

 l)e done,' as the N^cbraska F'armei- 

 puts it, and the identical germ de- 

 scribed by Pasteur was found. Un- 

 fortunately, Prof. Bessey's name is 

 mixed up with this work, but we 

 can hardly believe that he is in any 

 way responsible for it. Well, when 

 these hogs, after inoculation, were 

 exjDosed to the contagion of liog 



cholera, by allowing them to come 

 in contact with diseased animals, 

 most of them died. 



As a result of this laborious inves- 

 tigation by Dr. Gerth, extending over 

 nearly the whole of four months, the 

 work of years by Pasteur is declared 

 to be ovei'thrown, and we find an arti- 

 cle in The Breeder's Gazette headed 

 ' Inoculation for Hog Cholera a Fail- 

 ure ! ' 



Let us now consider the facts in 

 the case. The experiment has 

 proved absolutely nothing. If Dr. 

 Gerth had chosen to inform himself 

 concerning this matter before vmder- 

 taking his experiments, he might have 

 learned, bv application to the Bureau 

 of Animal Industry, that the swine- 

 disease of France, which Pasteur 

 has studied, is not the hog-cholera 

 that affects our animals ; and for this 

 reason it is not to be expected that 

 inoculations by Pasteur's virus would 

 confer immunity. Moreover, he 

 might also learn that the microbe of 

 the disease in this covnitry is not 

 Bacilhis suis but a species of the 

 genus Sacteriiim^ a discover}^ that 

 has recently been made in the labor- 

 atory of the Bureau in this city, the 

 credit of which is due to the pains- 

 taking researches of Dr. Theobald 

 .Smith, under the direction of Dr. D. 

 E. Salmon, chief of the Bureau. He 

 might also learn something about in- 

 oculations from the same source. 



The case above mentioned is bad 

 enough, but we have one other that 

 for dov/nright quackery and charla- 

 tanism exceeds anything else that has 

 recently come to our notice. We 

 cannot characterize it in any other 

 way. If it be more charitable to at- 

 tribute it to want of knowledge, then 

 we ask, what business has any man 

 to pose as an investigator of germ 

 diseases who is so absolutely igno- 

 rant of the necessaiy conditions for 

 such work as to ask for samples of 

 blood collected and dried on bits of 

 cloth to be examined for specific 

 germs? 



We regret to see that such a valua- 



