1873—1877 7 



agined that one of the principal causes of fatal accidents due 

 to septicaemia after surgical operations was the imperfect ven- 

 tilation of hospital wards. It was enough, he thought, that 

 putrid odours should not be perceptible, for the rate of mor- 

 tality to be decreased. 



It was then affirmed that putrid infection was not an or- 

 ganized ferment, that inferior organisms had in themselves 

 no toxic action, in fact, that they were the result and not 

 the cause of putrid alteration; whereupon Dr. Bouillaud, a 

 contemporary of Dr. Piorry, called upon their new colleague 

 to give his opinion on the subject. 



It would have been an act of graceful welcome to Pasteur, and 

 a fitting homage to the memory of the celebrated Trousseau , who 

 had died five years before, in 1867, if any member present had 

 then quoted one of the great practitioner's last lectures at the 

 Hotel Dieu, wherein he predicted a future for Pasteur's works : 



"The great theory of ferments is therefore now connected 

 with an organic function ; every ferment is a germ , the life 

 of which is manifested by a special secretion. It may be 

 that it is so for morbid viruses; they may be ferments, which, 

 deposited within the organism at a given moment and under 

 determined circumstances, manifest themselves by divers pro- 

 ducts. So will the variolous ferment produce variolic fer- 

 mentation, giving birth to thousands of pustules, and likewise 

 the virus of glanders , that of sheep pox, etc. . . . 



" Other viruses appear to act locally, but, nevertheless, they 

 ultimately modify the whole organism, as do gangrene, ma- 

 lignant pustula, contagious erysipelas, etc. May it not be 

 supposed, under such circumstances, that the ferment or or- 

 ganized matter of those viruses can be carried about by the 

 lancet, the atmosphere or the linen bandages? " 



But it occurred to no one in the Academy to quote those 

 forgotten words. 



Pasteur, answering Bouillaud, recalled his own researches 

 on lactic and butyric fermentations and spoke of his studies 

 on beer. He stated that the alteration of beer was due to 

 the presence of filiform organisms; if beer becomes altered, 

 it is because it contains germs of organized ferments. " The 

 correlation is certain, indisputable, between the disease and 

 the presence of organisms." He spoke those last words with 

 so much emphasis that the stenographer who was taking down 

 the extempore speeches underlined them. 



