1877—1879 63 



been wished for demonstration purposes, but nevertheless it 

 was sufficient to explain how charbon could declare itself, for 

 necropsy showed the characteristic lesions of the so-called spon- 

 taneous splenic fever. It was also to be concluded therefrom 

 that the evil begins in the mouth, or at the back of the throat, 

 supervening on meals of infected food, alone or mixed with 

 prickly plants likely to cause abrasion. 



It was therefore necessary, in a department like that of Eure 

 et Loir, which must be full of anthrax germs, — particularly on 

 the surface of the graves containing carcases of animals which 

 had fallen victims to the disease, — that sheep farmers should 

 keep from the food of their animals plants such as thistles, ears 

 of barley, and sharp pieces of straw; for the least scratch, 

 usually harmless to sheep, became dangerous through the pos- 

 sible introduction of the germs of the disease. 



'It would also be necessary," wrote Pasteur, "to avoid all 

 probable diffusion of charbon germs through the carcases of 

 animals dying of that disease, for it is likely that the depart- 

 ment of Eure et Loir contains those germs in greater quantities 

 than the other departments ; splenic fever having long 

 been established there, it always goes on, dead animals not 

 being disposed of so as to destroy all germs of ulterior con- 

 tagion." 



After finishing this report, Pasteur went to his little vine- 

 yard on the Besancon road, where he met with a disappoint- 

 ment ; his precious grapes had not ripened, all the strength of 

 the plant seemed to have gone to the wood and leaves. But 

 the grapes had their turn at the end of September and in 

 October, those bunches that were swathed in cotton wool as 

 well as those which had remained free under the glass ; there 

 was a great difference of colour between them, the former 

 being very pale. Pasteur placed grapes from the two series 

 in distinct tubes. On October 10, he compared the grapes 

 of the glass houses, free or swathed, with the neighbouring 

 open-air grapes. "The result was beyond my expectations; 

 the tubes of open-air grapes fermented with grape yeast after 

 a thirty-six or forty-eight hours' sojourn in a stove from 25° C. 

 to 30° C. ; not one, on the contrary, of the numerous tubes of 

 grapes swathed in cotton wool entered into alcoholic fermenta- 

 tion, neither did any of the tubes containing grapes ripened 

 free under glass. It was the experiment described in my 

 Studies on Beer. On the following days I repeated these 



