22 PRINCIPLES OF BACTERIOLOGY 



physician, has the honor of having first demonstrated the causal relation 

 of a micro-organism to a specific infectious disease in man and animals. 

 The anthrax bacillus was discovered in the blood of animals dying 

 from this disease by Pollender in 1849 and by Davaine in 1850; but 

 it was not until 1863 that the last-named observer demonstrated by 

 inoculation experiments that the bacillus was the cause of anthrax, 

 fte, The next discoveries made were those relating to wounds and the 

 infections to which they are liable. Rindfleisch in 1866 and Waldeyer 

 and von Recklinghausen in 1871 were the first to draw attention to 

 the minute organisms occurring in the pysemic processes resulting 

 from infected wounds, and occasionally following typhoid fever. Further 

 investigations were made in erysipelatous inflammations secondary to 

 injury by Billroth, Fehleisen, and others, agreeing that in these con- 

 ditions micro-organisms could almost always be detected in the lymph 

 channels of the subcutaneous tissues. 



The brilliant results obtained by Lister in 1863-1870, in the anti- 

 septic treatment of wounds, to prevent or inhibit the action of infective 

 organisms, exerted a powerful influence on the doctrine of bacterial 

 infection, causing it to be recognized far and wide and gradually lessen- 

 ing the number of its opponents. Lister's methods Avere suggested to 

 him by Pasteur's investigations on putrefaction. 



In 1877 Weigert and Ehrlich recommended the use of the aniline 

 dyes as staining agents in the microscopic examination of micro- 

 organisms in cover-glass preparations. 



In the year 1880 Pasteur published his discovery of the bacillus of 

 fowl cholera and his investigations upon the attenuation of the virus 

 of anthrax and of fowl cholera, and upon protective inoculation against 

 these diseases. Laveran in the same year announced the discovery 

 of parasitic bodies in the blood of persons sick with malarial fever, 

 and thus started investigations upon the unicellular animal parasites. 



In 1881 Koch made his fundamental researches upon pathogenic 

 bacteria. He introduced solid culture media and the "plate method" 

 for obtaining pure cultures, and showed how different organisms could 

 be isolated, cultivated independently, and by inoculation of pure cultures 

 into susceptible animals made, in many cases, to reproduce the specific 

 disease of which they were the cause. To him more than any other 

 are due the methods which have enabled us to prove absolutely in a 

 broad sense the permanence of bacterial varieties. It was in the course 

 of this work that the Abbe system of substage condensing apparatus 

 was first used in bacteriology. 



In 1882 Pasteur published his first communication upon rabies. 

 A little later came the investigations of Loeffler and Roux upon the 

 diphtheria bacillus and its toxins, and that of Kitasato upon tetanus. 

 These researches paved the way for Behring's discovery of diphtheria 

 antitoxin, which in its turn stimulated investigation upon the whole 

 subject of immunity. 



