NINETEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE 



duced four years ago, on March 21, 1887. Each year 

 the germination of these little corpuscles has been tried, 

 and each year the germination has been accomplished 

 with the same facility and the same rapidity as at first. 

 Each year also the virulence of the new cultures has 

 been tested, and they have not shown any visible falling 

 off. Therefore, how can we experiment with the action 

 of the air upon the anthrax virus with any expectation 

 of making it less virulent ? 



"The crucial difficulty lies perhaps entirely in this 

 rapid reproduction of the bacteria germs which we 

 have just related. In its form of a filament, and in its 

 multiplication by division, is not this organism at all 

 points comparable with the microbe of the chicken 

 cholera ? 



" That a germ, properly so called, that a seed, does 

 not suffer any modification on account of the air is 

 easily conceived ; but it is conceivable not less easily 

 that if there should be any change it would occur by 

 preference in the case of a mycelian fragment. It is 

 thus that a slip which may have been abandoned in 

 the soil in contact with the air does not take long 

 to lose all vitality, while under similar conditions a 

 seed is preserved in readiness to reproduce the plant. 

 If these views have any foundation, we are led to think 

 that in order to prove the action of the air upon the 

 anthrax bacteria it will be indispensable to submit to 

 this action the mycelian development of the minute 

 organism under conditions where there cannot be the 

 least admixture of corpuscular germs. Hence the 

 problem of submitting the bacteria to the action of 

 oxygen comes back to the question of presenting en- 



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