INFECTION. 117 



"While so high an authority as Pasteur asserts that the soil takes 

 up the bacteria and preserves them, and acts as a medium of culture 

 for them — also claiming to have found the common earthworm im- 

 pregnated with them, and looking upon the latter as a vehicle aid- 

 ing in their dispersion — we know that putrefaction is opposed to 

 their life and proliferation. All cadavers have to undergo the pro- 

 cesses of putrefaction and chemical decomposition. 



Collin buried anthrax victims within a limited district, and used 

 every means known to be favorable to the life of the bacteria, yet 

 he fed thirty-five animals with plants in every condition grown 

 upon such soil without producing any evil effects. 



Professor Feser buried a very large number of animals which 

 had perished from inoculated anthrax, and from which repeated 

 successful intra-vital and post-mortem experiments were made, in 

 the grounds around the government experiment station at Leng- 

 gries, in Upper Bavaria, yet during the ensuing summer, when I 

 was assistant with him, we were unable to produce a single success- 

 ful inoculation, not only from the soil, but from the remnants of 

 the cadavers. The same results followed like experiments made 

 with material taken from a very large number of places where an- 

 thrax-diseased animals had been buried in the mountains. 



Roloff, the present director of the Berlin school, is, however, a 

 strong partisan for the infectiousness of such places. 



Therapeutics. 



The administration of the antiseptics has been extensively tried, 

 and, in general, found unavailable in the treatment of this disease ; 

 although large doses, as large as safe, of carbolic acid, are said to 

 give favorable results to some practitioners. 



Immunity. 



The question of the immunity to infection on the part of indi- 

 viduals of the same species of animal life, as well as the immunity 

 against certain diseases of other species which exist all through the 

 animal kingdom, is one of the most hidden subjects in connection 

 with the study of disease. 



The consideration of this subject belongs, rightly, in our general 

 remarks upon bacteria ; but for special reasons we have placed it 

 here. 



"We know that one condition to infection is expressed by the 

 practical though scientifically blind remark, want of susceptibility. 

 In what this consists we know not. Not every person exposed to 



