FERMENTATION. 275 



matter. Placing over it a bit of goldbeaterVskin, I 

 walked about all day. Towards evening itching and 

 heat were felt; a large accumulation of matter followed, 

 and I was forced to go to bed again. The water- 

 bandage was restored, but it was powerless to check 

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

 matters worse. The inflammation increased alarm- 

 ingly, until finally I had to be carried on men's shoul- 

 ders down the mountain and transported to Geneva, 

 where, thanks to the kindness of friends, I was imme- 

 diately placed in the best medical hands. On the 

 morning after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Gautier dis- 

 covered 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 in- 

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

 the Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen, without show- 

 ing the slightest turbidity or sign of life. But two 

 days after they were opened the greater 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 swarm- 

 ing with these bacteria that it was their germs which 



