296 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



microzymes in the air, but that they have been disseminated by wind 

 from the surface of the earth. He believes that he lias proved this 

 completely. He considers that his theory is not the work of the 

 imagination, but is altogether based on experiment, and that it is 

 adequate to explain known facts. 



Vitality of Germs of Microbes.* — E. Duclaux has tried to discover 

 whether germs preserved damp would, like those preserved in the dry 

 state and sheltered from solar light, resist for several years the action 

 of temperatures higher than those of the hottest parts of the world. 

 The author has been able to make use of some infusions made by 

 Pasteur in 1875 and 1876 during his experiments on beer, and others 

 which he himself made in 1878 and 1879 when working at cheese. 

 With fifteen specimens of yeast only three cases of the death of the 

 cells occurred, and two of these ought to be attributed to extraneous 

 causes ; among the Tyrothrix of cheese, after five years, only T. clavi- 

 formis and T. urocephalum, which are essentially anaerobic, had died ; 

 all the aerobic species have survived in the form of spores. Among 

 micrococci the resistance to death is much less marked, one only 

 among ten having been found alive after three years' preservation. 

 These results agree generally with those obtained by Pasteur in 

 his studies on BaciUus anthracis, and the micrococci of chicken 

 cholera. 



As ten years were insufficient for the death of the larger number 

 of bacilli, the author was allowed by Pasteur to make observations 

 with some of the infusions prepared by him in 1859 and 1860. AU 

 the infusions in which living germs were found had the liquid still 

 slightly alkaline, while those in which they were dead were acid. 

 The alkalinity, however, to be favourable to life, must be slight. Of 

 the sixty-five infusions observed, fifteen contained living germs, and 

 that after a period of twenty to twenty-five years. 



Passage of Pathogenous Microbes from the Mother to the 



Foetus-t — M. Koubassoff points out that the generally accepted 

 doctrine of Brauell and Davaine that pathogenous microbes do not 

 pass from the mother to the foetus was shaken in 1882, when Arloing, 

 Cornevin, and Thomas showed that the bacteridia of symptomatic 

 anthrax (black-leg, or quarter-evil of cattle) may pass from the mother 

 to the foetus ; in the same year Strauss and Chamberland published two 

 papers, in the first of which they supported the ordinarily received 

 view, but in the second showed it to be erroneous. The author has 

 made five experiments with gravid guinea-pigs inoculated with 

 anthrax ; in the seventeen foetuses examined, all the organs have been 

 found to contain Bacillus anthracis. 



In one case Pasteur's vaccine was inoculated, and in another a 

 cultivation prepared from the heart of a foetus ; in the former the 

 examination of tlie organs of the foetus resulted in bacilli being found 

 very rarely, while of the cultivations made therefrom some only were 



♦ Comptes Rendiis, c. (1885) pp. 184-6. 

 t Ibid., pp. 073-.5. 



