238 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. 
The first idea was that microbes introduced into the 
blood or tissue of an animal acted like parasites of 
a higher organism—intestinal worms, for instance—by 
deriving their nourishment from their medium, and 
developing at its expense. It is evident that this 
must be the case, and that in anthrax, or splenic fever, 
for example, the bacilli which swarm in the blood 
abstract from the red corpuscles the oxygen they 
require, and thus produce asphyxia and the death of 
the animal. 
Yet it often happens, even in anthrax, that death 
is so rapid, that the bacilli have not yet had time to 
develop in the blood in numbers sufficient to produce 
such fatal effects. So, again, in cholera, the comma 
bacillus has not yet been found in the blood, and yet 
cases of sudden death are not uncommon in this 
disease. Some other explanation is therefore required. 
Panum first showed, from the study of the pro- 
ducts of putrefaction, that a poisonous substance, 
resembling snake-venom and vegetable alkaloids, is 
developed as the ultimate product of the putrid fer- 
mentation of organic matter. Twelve milligrammes of 
this substance kill a dog, while neither ammonia nor 
the acids which are first formed in this fermentation can 
produce septicemia. Bergemann and Schmiedeberg 
have termed this poisonous substance septine. 
Panum’s researches have been recently resumed by 
Selmi and Gautier, who have extracted from corpses 
and putrefying organic matter a certain number of 
