THE GERM THEORY 383 



of the earth. It is just this form of test to which M. 

 Joubert and I subjected the anthrax bacteridium* Having 

 cultivated it a great number of times in a sterile fluid, 

 each culture being started with a minute drop from the 

 preceding, we then demonstrated that the product of the 

 last culture was capable of further development and of 

 acting in the animal tissues by producing anthrax with all 

 its symptoms. Such is as we believe the indisputable 

 proof that anthrax is a bacterial disease. 



OUT researches concerning the septic vibrio had not so 

 far been convincing, and it was to fill up this gap that 

 we resumed our experiments. To this end, we attempted 

 the cultivation of the septic vibrio from an animal dead 

 of septicemia. It is worth noting that all of our first ex- 

 periments failed, despite the variety of culture media we 

 employed urine, beer yeast water, meat water, etc. Our 

 culture media were not sterile, but we found most com- 

 monly a microscopic organism showing no relationship to 

 the septic vibrio, and presenting the form, common enough 

 elsewhere, of chains of extremely minute spherical granules 

 possessed of no virulence whatever.* This was an impurity, 

 introduced, unknown to us, at the same time as the septic 

 vibrio ; and the germ undoubtedly passed from the intestines 

 always inflamed and distended in septicemic animals 

 into the abdominal fluids from which we took our original 

 cultures of the septic vibrio. If this explanation of the con- 

 tamination of our cultures was correct, we ought to find 

 a pure culture of the septic vibrio in the heart's blood 

 of an animal recently dead of septicemia. This was what 

 happened, but a new difficulty presented itself; all our cul- 

 tures remained sterile. Furthermore this sterility was ac- 

 companied by loss in the culture media of (the original) 

 virulence. 



It occurred to us that the septic vibrio might be an 

 obligatory anaerobe and that the sterility of our inoculated 

 culture fluids might be due to the destruction of the septic 



In nuking the translation. It seems wiser to adhere to Pasteur's nomen- 

 clature. Bacillus anthrocis would be the term employed to-day. Translator. 



* It is quite jxxsiblc that Pasteur was here dealing with certain septicrmic 

 streptococci that are now known to lose their virulence with extreme rapid* 

 ity under artificial cultivationTranslator. 



