THE LABOKATOKY OF THE ECOLE NORMALE. 275 



fever, he sometimes receives from a distant country a 

 bottled dose of vomito negro. 



Everywhere, on the work tables, are to be seen tubes 

 filled with blood, microscope slides carrying little drops. 

 In the stoves are ranged the cultivating flasks, which 

 resemble little flasks of liqueur. The point of a needle 

 dipped into one of these flasks is sufficient to cause 

 death. Enclosed in their glass prison, millions upon 

 millions of microbes live and multiply. 



It is really a curious spectacle this workshop of 

 research and discovery. How numerous and varied 

 are the subjects which are being studied, and with 

 what energy and patience does Pasteur attack them ! 

 It is not only to the most dreaded diseases that he has 

 applied the germ theory. He has extended it to certain 

 common disorders. Everything to him is a subject 

 for experiment. In May 1879, a person who was 

 working in the laboratory was troubled with boils, 

 which reappeared, as usually happens, at short in- 

 tervals, sometimes on one part of the body, sometimes 

 on another. Pasteur, whose mind was constantly 

 dwelling on the part played by microscopic organisms, 

 asked himself if the pus of the boils did not contain 

 a parasite, the presence and development of which, 

 and its accidental transport here and there in the 

 body, might be the cause of the [local inflammation 

 and of the formation of the pus. The constant re- 

 appearance of the evil would be thus accounted for. 



T 2 



