618 
NATURE 
[ Oct. 29, 1885 
meat extract, or Agar-Agar peptone and broth, &c. In 
each of these media the comma bacilli thrive well and 
form copious growths. The cultures are pure, contain 
the comma bacilli only, as all sub-cultures from them 
yield again the comma bacilli, and comma bacilli only. 
Now the remarkable fact about such culture tubes is this: 
that after several months all life in them becomes extinct, 
as is proved by inoculating from them a series of tubes 
containing suitable nutritive material, no comma bacillus 
or any other bacteria making their appearance. I have 
ascertained this in a great many cases, and it is in perfect 
agreement with the experience of Koch and many other 
workers. This clearly proves that there are not present 
in such tubes spores of the comma bacilli, for, if the 
comma bacilli, like some other bacilli—e.g. bacillus sub- 
tilis of hay infusion, or bacillus anthracis, were capable 
of forming spores, such a total extinction of life could not 
take place ; the spores, although, owing to exhaustion of 
nutritive material, incapable of germinating into bacilli 
while in the tube in which they were formed, would un- 
doubtedly germinate when transferred into a fresh and 
suitable nutritive medium. This total extinction of life does 
occur not only in tubes in which the nutritive medium is in, 
a fluid condition, but also in all Agar-Agar peptone broth 
tubes, this material, unlike gelatine, remaining in its solid 
state, however luxuriant the growth of the comma bacilli 
may be. 
Dr. Ferran claims to have discovered means by which 
the comma bacilli can be made to produce spores. In 
his cultures he notices a number of peculiar things 
which he considers as antecedents to the formation 
of spores and as fully formed spores. But direct 
observations that these are really spores, that, like 
spores, they actually germinate into the bacilli, Dr. 
Ferran has not deemed it necessary to make. As a 
matter of fact those to whom Dr. Ferran has shown his 
specimens, in which these alleged spores were supposed 
to be present, failed to see them (see the Report of the 
French Commission headed by Dr. Brouardel ; see also | 
Dr, van Ermengem’s Report). 
The methods of examination and cultivation of bac- 
teria perfected by Koch, which, owing to the thoroughly 
reliable results they yield, are now universally followed 
by all who wish to acquire correct ideas and a sound 
knowledge of the life-history, morphology, and activity of 
bacteria, have led those practically acquainted with the 
comma bacilli to the conclusion that they do not form 
spores. Dr. Ferran is of the contrary opinion; but, 
judging from the Report of the French Commission, and 
from that of van Ermengem and others, who have visited 
Ferran and seen him at work, it is pretty clear that this 
gentleman is not only unpractised in, but altogether unac- 
quainted with the elements of technique necessary in 
bacterial investigations ; more than this: according to a 
graphic description by the special correspondent of the 
Times, Dr. Ferran makes his cultivations in broth in a 
temporary laboratory, the kitchen of an untenanted house, 
reeking with the effluvia of an untrapped sewer opening 
into this kitchen. Dr. Ferran’s cultivations have been 
examined microscopically by a Valencia Commission, 
who found that they contained a motley crowd of various 
kinds of bacteria; Dr. Chantemesse in a paper read 
before the Paris Académie de Médecine (see Brit, Med. 
Fournal, Sept. 26, 1885) states that as the result of a 
microscopic examination of Dr. Ferran’s cultures he found 
the fluid variable in its composition ; sometimes it is a 
cultivation of impure comma bacilli, sometimes it contains 
masses of different micro-organisms, but the comma 
bacilli are barely present. Add to this that Dr. Ferran, 
as the special French Commission attested, possesses 
neither the skill noruses the ordinary precautions and appa- 
ratus indispensable in investigations of this nature, and all 
Ferran’s extravagant assertions as to the behaviour of. 
the comma bacillus in cultivations, as to its peculiar power 
of forming spores, must be regarded as sheer nonsense. 
3. Notwithstanding this deficiency of Ferran in his 
mode of preparing his so-called “ vaccine,” it might be 
said, and it has been said by Dr. Cameron in a powerful 
and very able article in the Wineteenth Century for 
August 1885, that by subcutaneously inoculating a culti- 
vation of comma bacilli, no matter however impure and 
contaminated, e.g. such as were at Ferran’s disposal, the 
effect is different from the one produced by introducing 
them into the alimentary canal. In the former case, 2.¢. 
in the subcutaneous tissue, they are planted in a soil 
not congenial to them, and their product is only an 
abortive form of cholera, whereas in the latter, z.e. in the 
cavity of the alimentary canal, they find a more suitable 
soil, a soil which is their natural breeding ground, and 
the result is virulent real cholera. 
What Ferran by the inoculation of his cultures into the 
subcutaneous tissue of human beings actually did pro- 
duce, is, according to a number of witnesses (see the 
letters of the special correspondent of the British Medical 
Journal; the evidence given in detail by the special 
correspondent of the Zzes, October 20, and a number 
of other independent witnesses, English and French), 
septic infection, the intensity of which, as might be 
expected, and as Ferran himself admits, depends on the 
quantity injected. This result, however, is not always 
produced, the injection being sometimes quite inert, 
notwithstanding the presence of the comma-bacilli 
in the “vaccine” fluid. In the very able letter by 
the special correspondent of the TZzmes for October 
20 we are informed that Dr. Ferran explained to 
this gentleman in detail that the culture fluid used 
for inoculation need not contain any comma bacilli 
at all, in order to produce the desired result ; further, 
that the comma bacilli can be killed by boiling or other- 
wise, without impairing the efficacy of the fluid, and that 
therefore a chemical substance present in the culture 
fluid, and probably the product of the organisms, must 
be regarded as the active principle. While this latest 
assertion of Ferran clearly shows that he is profoundly 
ignorant of the theory and practice of protective inocula- 
tions, such as are employed by Chauveau, Pasteur, Koch, 
Gaffkky, Arloing and Thomas, and many others in a 
variety of specific diseases (anthrax, some forms of septic- 
zemia, fowl cholera, symptomatic charbon, &c.), and 
while it is in flagrant opposition to his own assertions of 
an earlier date, it also proves that the results obtained by 
Ferran by the inoculations of his “ cholera vaccine” into 
the subcutaneous tissue of human beings harmonise well 
with the assumption that what he produces is simply 
septic poisoning, z.e. changes such as have been proved to 
follow the injection of certain chemical substances known 
