238 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 



The first idea was that microbes introduced into the 

 blood or tissue of an animal acted like parasites of 

 a higher organism intestinal worms, for instance by 

 deriving their nourishment from their medium, and 

 developing at its expense. It is evident that this 

 must be the case, and that in anthrax, or splenic fever, 

 for example, the bacilli which swarm in the blood 

 abstract from the red corpuscles the oxygen they 

 require, and thus produce asphyxia and the death of 

 the animal. 



Yet it often happens, even in anthrax, that death 

 is so rapid, that the bacilli have not yet had time to 

 develop in the blood in numbers sufficient to produce 

 such fatal effects. So, again, in cholera, the comma 

 bacillus has not yet been found in the blood, and yet 

 cases of sudden death are not uncommon in this 

 disease. Some other explanation is therefore required. 



Panum first showed, from the study of the pro- 

 ducts of putrefaction, that a poisonous substance, 

 resembling snake-venom and vegetable alkaloids, is 

 developed as the ultimate product of the putrid fer- 

 mentation of organic matter. Twelve milligrammes of 

 this substance kill a dog, while neither ammonia nor 

 the acids which are first formed in this fermentation can 

 produce septicaemia. Bergemann and Schmiedeberg 

 have termed this poisonous substance septine. 



Panum's researches have been recently resumed by 

 Selmi and Gautier, who have extracted from corpses 

 and putrefying organic matter a certain number of 



