STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 43 



of animals attacked by these diseases minute filiform bodies, to 

 wbich they paid little attention, and which M. Davainne 

 recollected, when he came across our Memoir. He had the foi'e- 

 sight to conjecture — a conjecture that was soon confirmed most 

 decisively by his researches — that the former disease, known 

 under the name of sang cle rate, might be the production of a 

 fermentation analogous to the butyric, in which the minute fili- 

 form bodies observed by Rayer and himself, in 1850, played the 

 part which vibrios fill in butyric fermentation. Within two years 

 of this the first works of Messrs. Coze and Feltz appeared. These 

 clever and courageous experimentalists avowed that their beau- 

 tiful researches had been suggested to them by the perusal of 

 my work on putrefaction, published in 1863. We might also 

 quote the striking and admirably conceived experiments of Dr. 

 Chauveau, on castration.* We cannot, however, refrain from 

 reproducing here a letter addressed to us in 1874 by the cele- 

 brated Edinburgh surgeon, Mr. Lister: — 



" Edinburgh, Feb. 10, 1874. 

 " Dear Sir, — Will you permit me to beg your acceptance of 

 a pamphlet which I forward to you by this post, and which 

 describes certain inquiries into a subject upon which you have 

 thrown so much light — the theory of germs and fermentation ? 

 It gives me pleasure to think that you will peruse with some 

 interest what I have written about an organism that you 



* Chauveau' 8 experiments were directed to show that the operation 

 listournage, employed by veterinary surgeons for castrating animals by 

 twisting and subcutaneous rupture of the spermatic cord, an operation 

 which, though leading to the mortification and subsequent absorption of 

 the testicles, is commonly attended with no other mischief to the animal, 

 does, nevertheless, lead to septic eflFects of a serious character, provided 

 that septic germs — decomposing serum containing vibrios, for example — 

 be introduced into the blood current. From the fact that the operation 

 is ordinarily harmless, M. Chauveau concludes that septic organisms are 

 not produced by the action of the constituent gases of the atmosphere — 

 always present in the blood — upon albuminous matter when outside vital 

 influences ; whilst, from the success of the direct experiment of intro- 

 ducing septic germs, he concludes that the phenomena always arise from 

 the actual presence of such genns. — D. C. B. 



