THE SEPTIC VIBRIO 261 



to the air only fine amorphous granules, which cannot 

 be cultivated and which will not communicate any 

 disease whatsoever. One might say that the air burns 

 up the vibrios. 



"If it is terrifying to think that life is at the mercy 

 of the multiplication of these infinitely small organisms, 

 it is, on the other hand, consoling to hope that science 

 will not always remain powerless before such enemies, 

 since having barely begun the study of them, she has 

 taught us, for example, that simple contact with the 

 air is sometimes sufficient to destroy them." 1 



The progress we have just made seems perplexing 

 in the light of what we already know. How can sep- 

 ticemia exist if air destroys the vibrios? How can the 

 blood, kept in contact with the air, become or remain 

 septic? How did Leplat and Jaillard, who had no idea 

 of anaerobic life and its demands, obtain, almost at 

 once, septicemia in the animals they inoculated? The 

 reason for this is that all we have said is true for vibrios 

 in course of development but it does not hold good for 

 the spores. The latter do not form 'in contact with air. 

 They are not produced in the serosity spread out in a 

 thin layer such as that just described. But place the 

 same quantity of serosity in a tube of small diameter 

 which we keep upright, and allow the oxygen to act on 

 it in the same way and all will be changed. The vibrios 

 on the surface die by absorbing oxygen and thus protect 

 those in the depths, which have time to form spores. 

 The latter, once formed, have nothing to fear from the 

 air, and the liquid which the oxygen had rendered harm- 

 less in the first instance, here remains virulent, because 

 instead of being in a horizontal tube it is in a vertical 

 one. 



1 La Theorie des germes et ses applications a la M6decine et a la 

 Chirurgie. Lecture faite a 1'Acad. de M6decine, le 28 avril, 1878. 



