OBJECTIONS TO THE GERM THEORY. 85 



tion. Results of this kind were obtained by Hiller, for 

 example, in his experiments with urine. Further, 

 living micro-organisms were found by several observers 

 in organs which had been taken from the freshly killed 

 animal body, and their presence was therefore pre- 

 sumably unaccompanied by any alterative action. 



These objections and experiments are, however, now 

 only of historical interest. They date from a period 

 at which little or nothing was known of the various 

 species of micro-organisms, and of their very different con- 

 ditions of life and mode of action. It is now self-evident 

 that it is not every organism which is able to grow 

 actively in every nutritive substratum, and further that 

 the development of certain organisms is not necessarily 

 accompanied by the formation of stinking gases, in short, 

 by the ordinary symptoms of putrefaction. To find 

 organisms without accompanying putrefaction or fer- 

 mentation is therefore not surprising, and proves nothing 

 against the vitalistic theory. 



3. In several series of experiments it was observed 3. Difficulty in 

 that albuminous solutions were only slowly or not at all tion of 



broken up by the micro-organisms sown in them, that the 

 latter, in fact, like the higher plants, build up their micro- 



,,,., . T ., organisms. 



protoplasm from the simplest organic compounds, and 

 hence only grow and multiply with difficulty in the living 

 animal tissue, and in cultivation experiments in eggs, 

 for example. It was therefore concluded that it was 

 impossible that they could take any important part in 

 such intense decomposition of albuminous materials as is 

 the characteristic of the putrefactive process. (Billroth, 

 Hiller, Hoppe-Seyler, Paschutiri, and others.) 



These observations could only be puzzling at a time 

 when the marked biological differences between the 

 different species of fungi were as yet unknown or dis- 

 regarded. Now we know with the most complete cer- 

 tainty that some micro-organisms occasion a profound 

 decomposition of the albuminous molecules, and thus 

 set up the putrefactive process, while on the other hand 

 a large number of the lower fungi do not possess any 

 such power, and therefore we cannot deduce from experi- 



