ETIOLOGY OF SPLENIC FEVER. 255 



Pasteur showed that this opinion rested on a super- 

 ficial observation. Even when the animal is not cut 

 up, blood spreads itself outside of the body in more or 

 less abundance. Is it not an habitual characteristic of 

 the disease, that at the time of death blood issues from 

 the nostrils and the mouth, and that the urine is often 

 bloody? All around the corpse, therefore, the earth 

 is polluted with blood. Moreover it takes several 

 days for the splenic fever microbe to resolve itself into 

 harmless granulations by the action of gases, other 

 than oxygen, which putrefaction generates. During 

 this time, the excessive inflation of the dead body 

 causes the liquids of the interior to issue from all the 

 natural apertures. How often also, a rent in the skin 

 or the tissues increases this flow. The blood and other 

 matters, mixed with the surrounding aerated soil, are 

 no longer in the conditions of putrefaction, but rather 

 in those which form a suitable medium of cultivation 

 for the microbe. Experiments confirmed these views. 

 Adding some splenic fever blood to earth sprinkled 

 with the water of yeast, or with urine, at summer 

 temperature, or at the temperature which the fer- 

 mentation of a dead body keeps up around it, as in a 

 dung heap, in less than twenty-four hours the splenic 

 fever filaments deposited with the blood had multiplied 

 and resolved themselves into spores. These spores 

 were afterwards found in their state of latent life, 

 ready to germinate and to communicate splenic fever, 



