86 THE DEATH-POINT OF 
account for the fact that these fluids remained quite 
unaltered although living organisms were added to 
them in the same proportion as they had been to those 
less-heated fluids which had so rapidly become turbid? 
Even if there does remain the mere possibility that the 
organisms and their supposed germs had not actually 
been killed, they were certainly so far damaged as to 
be unable to manifest any vital characteristics. The 
heat had, at all events, deprived them of their powers 
of growth and multiplication ; and these gone, so little 
of what we are accustomed to call ‘life’ could remain, 
that practically they might well be considered dead. 
And, as I shall subsequently show, the production of 
this potential death by the temperature of 140°F, 
enables us to draw just the same conclusions from 
other experiments, as if such a temperature had pro- 
duced a demonstrably actual death.* Seeing also that 
these saline solutions were inoculated with a fluid in 
which Bacteria and Vibriones were multiplying rapidly, 
we had aright to infer that they were multiplying in 
their accustomed manner, “as much by the known 
method of fission, as by any unknown and assumed 
method of reproduction.” So that, as I at the time 
said,f “These experiments seem to show, therefore, 
that even if Bacteria do multiply by means of invis- 
* See p. 95. 
+ Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms, 1871, p. 60. 
