PART III.] Vegetable Organisms in the Blood in Septiccemia. 579 



the "spores" may be dead, their invisible germs still live, and, under favourable 

 circumstances, will re-appear. 



With the foregoing explanation as to the difference between bacilli and their 

 "spores," in their power of withstanding agencies ordinarily destructive to life, M. 

 Pasteur was able to convince his former pupil, M. Bert, of the cause of the discrepancies 

 in their respective results, and this the more readily from the circumstance that 

 when a little of the dried alcoholic precipitate of charbon-blood was placed in 

 urine the fluid not only manifested virulent properties, but also gave rise to 

 a plentiful crop of bacillus-filaments identical in appearance with those which had 

 existed in the blood previous to its being treated with alcohol. 



It does not seem to have occurred either to M. Pasteur or to M. Bert that 

 under certain circumstances the addition of any dried organic substance to suitable 

 urine would probably be followed by a crop of bacillus. Indeed, it not unfrequently 

 happens that such a crop may be obtained without intentionally adding any- 

 thing. 



Whilst this paper was in preparation it occurred to me to place such a sample 

 of urine under different conditions as to temperature, etc., and to carefully observe 

 the results. Some specimens were made slightly alkaline, others made neutral, and 

 others again left untouched. All the specimens were kept at temperatures varying 

 from SS'' to 40^ C. (95° to 104° Fahr.), and it was found on the following day 

 that nearly half the specimens were coated with a thin pellicle consisting of bacilli 

 in all stages of development, the spore-stage included, notwithstanding that con- 

 siderable care had been taken' to keep out particles and foreign matter of every 

 description. These appearances are familiar to all who have devoted much attention 

 to microscopic studies. It need hardly be added that organisms thus obtained 

 would produce no effect on animals if freed from the decomposed urine. 



B.— The Vegetable Organisms in Septicsemia. 



The belief that septicsemia is produced by organisms belonging to the lower 

 group of fungi has had almost as many adherents as the doctrine just considered, 

 and the literature in support of it is even more extensive. The virus secreted by 

 animals suffering from this disease is, when transferred to the circulation of other 

 animals, as fatal in its results as that of charbon. It can, moreover, be transferred 

 from animal to animal * almost indefinitely. The symptoms induced by such 

 inoculation are frequently so very like those witnessed in splenic fever that it is 

 often impossible satisfactorily to distinguish them. There is, however, this marked 

 distinction, namely, that whereas the presence of organisms in the blood before 



* Observations illustrative of this have long been known. Hamont, for example, in 1827 injected matter 

 from a gangrenous abscess from one horse to another and from the inoculated horse to a second horse, and 

 found that death resulted with pretty much the same symptoms in both cases. — MM. Coze and Feltz, in Les 

 Maladies Infeotieuges, p. 58, 1872. 



