FERMENTATION. 261 



the action now set up ; arnica was applied, but it made 

 matters worse. The inflammation increased alarmingly, 

 until finally I had to be carried on men's shoulders 

 down the mountain and transported to Greneva, where^ 

 thanks to the kindness of friends, I was immediately 

 placed in the best medical hands. On the morning 

 after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Gautier discovered an 

 abscess in my instep, at a distance of five inches from 

 the wound. The two were connected by a channel, or 

 sinus, as it is technically called, through which he was 

 able to empty the abscess, without the application of 

 the lance. 



By what agency was that channel formed — what 

 was it that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my 

 instep, and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed ? 

 In the very room where the water dressing had been 

 removed from my wound, and the goldbeater's-skin 

 applied to it, I opened this year a number of tubes, 

 containing perfectly clear and sweet infusions of fish, 

 flesh, and vegetable. These hermetically-sealed infusions 

 had been exposed for weeks, both to the sun of the 

 Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen, without showing 

 the slightest turbidity or sign of life. But two days 

 after they were opened the gTeater number of them 

 swarmed with the bacteria of putrefaction, the germs 

 of which had been contracted from the dust-laden air 

 of the room. And had the matter from my abscess 

 been examined, my memory of its appearance leads 

 me to infer that it would have been found equally 

 swarming with these bacteria — that it was their germs 

 which got into my incautiously opened wound, and that 

 they were the subtile workers that burrowed down my 

 shin, dug the abscess in my instep, and produced effects 

 which might easily have proved fatal. 



This apparent digression brings us face to face witli 



