'METHOD OF DISCUSSION AND CONTRADICTIONS. 267 



immediately requested that a commission might be 

 named, which should include both himself and his 

 opponent among its members. This was on a Tuesday, 

 one of the Academy days of sitting. The following 

 Saturday, in presence cf the whole commission, 

 Pasteur produced four hens that had died of splenic 

 fever. M. Colin himself conducted the autopsy. It 

 was clear to everyone that their blood was full of the 

 filaments of the splenic fever parasite. The proces- 

 verbal was drawn up and signed by all the members 

 of the commission, necessarily including M. Colin. The 

 following Tuesday it was read at the sitting of the 

 Academy. To cover his retreat M. Colin now contended 

 that the hens had taken splenic fever not because they 

 had been subjected to a chilling process, but because, 

 so as to keep them in the water, the poor creatures 

 had had their wings and feet tied to planks. This 

 sentimental objection was disposed of by comparative 

 experiments that had been made on hens similarly 

 tied and inoculated, but not chilled. The latter had 

 in no case taken the disease. 



At the Academy of Sciences, some days later, a mine 

 was sprung upon Pasteur by a posthumous publica- 

 tion of Claude Bernard's. He again submitted this 

 abruptly raised question to the decision of the 

 Academy. A series of experiments had been found 

 among Bernard's papers, having as their object the 

 inauguration of a new method of spontaneously gene- 



