538 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Topics of Interest. 



Oriiin of Foul-Brooil. 



S. CORNIEL. 



Mr. Robinson is to be commended for 

 tacitly admitting the weight of the au- 

 thorities I quoted to prove that there is 

 no such thing as spontaneous generation, 

 that there are no latent spores in living, 

 healthy tissues, and that neither fermen- 

 tation nor putrefaction can take place in 

 the larvae of bees, except such as is 

 caused by microbes introduced from 

 without. 



The only error he attempts to defend 

 by anything more than his own incoher- 

 ent and rambling statements, is that the 

 microbes of foul-brood do not harm ma- 

 ture bees. To support his contention, 

 he correctly qitotes Dr. Dzierzon as say- 

 ing that "foul-brood, indeed, is a disease 

 of the larvae, and not of the emerged 

 bees ;" but the paper In the Bienen 

 Zeitung, from which this quotation is 

 taken, was written in 1857 — that is 17 

 years before Prof. Cohn, or any one else, 

 thought of looking for microbes in either 

 bees or brood. Mr. Robinson might bet- 

 ter have conceded this point with the 

 others. 



It is a pity that Mr. Robinson con- 

 tinues to claim that before his pretended 

 discovery in 1882, it was not a well- 

 established, and well-known fact that 

 foul-brood is a germ disease, because to 

 settle the matter now, once for all, I 

 shall be obliged to strip him of his 

 assumed honors as a discoverer, and 

 place hini in his true position. 



Mr. Robinson says "I was the fir^t 

 who, in 1882, pointed out that foul- 

 brood was the result of bacteria," and 

 again he says, "Prior to 1882 no writer 

 respecting foul-brood, in America or 

 elsewhere, mentioned that foul-brood is 

 caused by germs." Mr. Robinson either 

 forgets, or presumes too much on the 

 forgetfulness of his readers. 



Within a short time previous to the 

 announcement of Mr. Robinson's pre- 

 tended discovery in 1882, Muth's Prac- 

 tical Hints, Kohnke's Foul-Brood, its 

 Origin, Development and Cure ; Dzier- 

 zon's Rational Bee-Keeping, and Quinby's 

 Bee-Keeping Explained, were published, 

 in each of which it is taught that foul- 

 brood is the result of bacteria. There is 

 an essay by Mr. C. F. Muth, in the 

 American Bee Journal for 1879, and 



he has another in the same periodical 

 for 1880, in both of which the cause of 

 the disease is attributed to germs. In 

 an essay on page 504, of the American 

 Bee Journal for 1879, Dr. L, C. 

 Whiting says : "The researches of Dr. 

 Preusz, and others, lead to the opinion 

 that the disease is caused by a micro- 

 scopic fungus cryptococcus alveolario." 

 On page 460 of the American Bee 

 Journal for 1880, there is an essay on 

 foul-brood by Mr. Kohnke, in which he 

 says, "It is a process of putrefaction, 

 induced by the presence of bacteria, a 

 low form of animal life pervading the 

 honey and the stomachs of the bees, the 

 germs of which are so small that the 

 slightest whiff will carry them, not only 

 from one hive to another, but from one 

 apiary to another." 



In the face of the foregoing facts, pub- 

 lished not in " far-off Europe," but at 

 his very elbow, so to speak, how absurd 

 it is for Mr. Robinson to say that, prior 

 to 1882, no writer mentioned that foul- 

 brood is caused by germs. 



Mr. Robinson says: " Dr. Cohn did 

 not make any experiments that demon- 

 strated whether the germs that he es- 

 pied under the lens were such as to 

 originate foul-brood by contagion," and 

 again "Dr. Cohn's discovery afforded no 

 clue to a solution of the problem, and 

 nothing came of it." 



It should be borne in mind that in his 

 experiment, in which he claims to have 

 discovered that foul-brood is a germ dis 

 ease, Mr. Robinson saw no germs, nor 

 does he know, as a matter of observation, 

 that there were any. He only inferred 

 that they were present, presumably from 

 reading of the discoveries made by more 

 thorough investigators. We shall now 

 see what came of Dr. Cohn's discovery. 



At a gathering of bee-keepers held at 

 Saltzborg, Germany, in the Spring of 

 1876, within two years after Prof. Cohn 

 made his discovery. Dr. Dzierzon asked, 

 "What is to be looked upon as decided 

 relative to foul-brood, both as regards 

 theory and practice, and what remains 

 now undecided?" After discussion it was 

 agreed that the following problems 

 should be solved experimentally: 



"First. It must incontrovertibly be 

 proved that the spores of the fungus 

 leave the dried up foul-brood, and they 

 must, inasmuch as they float in the air, 

 be capable of being caught." 



"Second. It must next be shown that 

 such fungus spores, that are caught in 

 the atmosphere, when placed on healthy 

 larv«, can grow and increase to an un- 

 accountable number, until at last they 



