SEPTICAEMIA IN RABBITS. 367 



from the injection beneath the skin of a rabbit of 

 buccal mucus, gathered by means of a camels- 

 hair brush from the mouth of a child which died 

 in one of the hospitals of Paris from hydrophobia 

 (December 11, 1880). The material was obtained 

 four hours after death; the brush used to collect it 

 was washed out in water, and the fluid injected 

 into two rabbits. These were found dead Decem- 

 ber 13. Other rabbits were inoculated with blood 

 from these, and their death with the same symp- 

 toms proved that an infectious disease had been 

 produced. 



There can no longer be any doubt that this dis- 

 ease was identical with that which the writer had 

 previously produced by inoculating rabbits with 

 his own saliva ; and, consequently, that the natural 

 inference of Pasteur that this " new disease " was 

 due to the fact that the child from whom the 

 material which produced it was obtained had died 

 of hydrophobia, was an error. Subsequent experi- 

 ments by Vulpian and others soon made it plain 

 that a mistake had occurred, and nothing more has 

 been heard from Pasteur concerning his new dis- 

 ease. But the results reported are entirely in 

 accord with the deductions of the writer as to the 

 etiological role of the micrococcus. 



Pasteur describes this as follows : 



u This organism is sometimes so small that it may 

 escape a superficial observation. Its form does not differ 

 from that of many other microscopic beings. It is an 

 extremely short rad a little compressed towards the 



