VIKULENT DISEASES. 185 



a, great analogy with these vibrios, I was led to 

 examine whether filiform corpuscles, analogous to or of 

 the same kind as those which determined the butyric 

 fermentation, would not, if introduced into the blood 

 of an animal, equally act the part of a ferment. 

 Thus would be easily explained the alteration, and the 

 rapid infection of the mass of the blood, in an animal 

 which had received accidentally or experimentally into 

 its veins a certain number of these bacteria that is to 

 say, of this ferment.' 



But two summers passed before M. Davaine was 

 able to procure a sheep affected with the sang -de-rate. 

 It was only in 1863 that he first recognised the 

 constant presence of a parasite, in the blood of sheep 

 and rabbits which had died from successive inocula- 

 tions with blood taken after death or in the last hours 

 of life. He further proved that the inoculated animal, 

 in the blood of which no parasites were as yet visible 

 with the microscope, had every appearance of health, 

 and that in these conditions the blood could not com- 

 municate splenic fever. 



'In the present state of science,' Davaine con- 

 cluded, ' no one would think of going beyond these 

 corpuscles to seek for the agent of the contagion. This 

 agent is visible, palpable ; it is an organised being, 

 endowed with life, which is developed and propagated 

 in the same manner as other living beings. By its 

 presence, and its rapid multiplication in the blood, it 



