OBJECTIONS TO THE NEW DOCTRINE 247 



the bacteridium, or the virus which accompanies this 

 bacteridium? 



Viewed from this standpoint the results of Davaine 

 and even those of Koch left room for hesitation and 

 doubt. When one made inoculations, as Davaine did, 

 with anthrax blood, he inoculated along with the bac- 

 teridia all the substances accompanying them in the 

 blood, and among these there might be a substance 

 in the nature of a virus, developing along with the bac- 

 teridia in the inoculated animal and escaping observa- 

 tion because one could not distinguish the virus micro- 

 scopically from granulations of the organic liquids. 

 The bacteridium, which can be seen and distinguished, 

 seems, therefore, to develop alone and to be the exclusive 

 cause of the malady, when it is possible, that it is only 

 an epiphenomenon as they say in the medical school. 



The experiments dealing with the natural nitration 

 of the blood through the placenta and of artificial filtra- 

 tion through a porous wall, which Davaine presented 

 as arguments in favor of the role of causal agent be- 

 longing exclusively to the bacteridium, demonstrated 

 only that this active role was not vested in the soluble 

 elements. We know, since Chauveau's time, that a 

 virus is a solid organized body which cannot pass 

 through the placenta or porous plates and which, re- 

 maining on the surface of the filter with the bacteridium, 

 may be inoculated with it. 



Koch had made more convincing experiments along 

 this line. He sowed in a drop of serum a tiny drop of 

 blood or bit of tissue from an anthrax victim, and left 

 the culture to grow. Then, from this first culture, he 

 had inoculated a new drop and thus made 8 successive 

 cultures, the last of which was capable of producing an- 

 thrax in a healthy animal. But there again, there was 

 room for a doubt. There was no certainty that the 



