280 LOUIS PASTEUR. 



habitually went himself to collect specimens of the 

 blood of those who had died. How numerous were the 

 drops of blood thus enclosed in little tubes, and how 

 frequent the attempts at cultivation, as yet without re- 

 sult, in the hope of finding the cause of a disease which 

 claims so many victims ! There is another malady to 

 which Dr. Hervieux especially called Pasteur's atten- 

 tion, and by which so many women are attacked 

 / puerperal fever. He went with M. Hervieux to the 

 Maternity Hospital, to visit a woman under his charge 

 who had contracted puerperal fever some days after her 

 confinement. By means of a pin a prick was made in 

 the forefinger of the left hand, which had been washed 

 previously with dilute alcohol and carbolic acid, and 

 dried with singed linen. The drop of blood taken 

 in this way was sown in an infusion of fowl. For 

 some days the cultivation remained sterile. Next 

 day blood was taken from a fresh puncture, and 

 this time it proved fertile. The woman died three 

 days after. The blood, therefore, already at the time 

 when Pasteur had taken it, three days at least before 

 death, contained a microscopic parasite capable of 

 cultivation. Eighteen hours before this woman died, 

 some blood taken from the left foot had been sown, 

 and, like the former, it had proved productive ; but 

 and this fact deserves to be noted while the first 

 productive cultivation only contained a microbe re- 

 sembling that of boils, the other cultivation contained 



