158 BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



drawn that all descriptions of bacteria will be 

 equally feeble and helpless in these circumstances. 



Doctors Percy Frankland and Templeman have 

 shown that the spore form of the anthrax bacillus 

 is able to successfully challenge all such attempts 

 upon its vitality. Thus when put into water and 

 frozen at a temperature of - 20 C., the process 

 being extended over a period of three months and 

 interrupted no fewer than twenty-nine times by 

 thawings, when examined even after this severe 

 series of shocks, it showed no signs of submission 

 and clung to life as tenaciously as ever. 



The more sensitive form of anthrax, however, 

 the bacillus, was readily destroyed ; for after one 

 freezing its numbers were already so much reduced 

 that it was only with difficulty that even one or 

 two could be found, and after the second freezing 

 every one out of the large number originally 

 present had died. 



Renewed interest has been of late revived in 

 the question of the behaviour of bacteria at low 

 temperatures, in consequence of the possibility 

 of obtaining, by means of liquid air and liquid 

 hydrogen, degrees of cold which were undreamt 

 of by the scientific philosophers of fifty years ago. 

 Public interest has also been quickened in such 

 inquiries on account of the important part which 

 low temperatures play in many great commercial 



