294 MICROBES, FERMENTS, AND MOULDS. _ 
certainly lives and is developed in the toxic juice of 
the seeds of Abrus precatorius, but which, as Klein 
has shown, has no influence on the artificial conjunc- 
tivitis produced by the aid of this liquid. 
This theory of ptomaines without microbes is, 
however, inconsistent with an impartial study of facts. 
It is true that a suitable filtration will separate the 
ptomaine from its microbe; but the converse, as in 
the case of the jequirity liquid, is impossible. When 
this microbe is separated from the original liquid, 
and transferred to the infusions of successive cultures, 
so as to purify it from every foreign element, it 
continues to produce its characteristic ptomaine, which 
is manufactured completely at the expense of the 
culture liquid, as Pouchet’s recent experiments on the 
ptomaine of cholera have shown. There is no ptomaine 
without its special microbe, any more than there is 
ergotine without Claviceps purpurea, or vinegar 
without Mycoderma aceti. 
Pastewr’s Microbian Theory is the only one which 
explains all Facts.—The microbian theory is the only 
one which is not obliged to have recourse to the vague 
expressions with which medicine was formerly content 
to explain the contagion of diseases, and which still 
satisfies Jousset de Bellesme, when he speaks of the 
wholly obscure conditions which accompany the pro- 
duction of these diseases. All the expressions of 
miasmata, virus, effluvia, ete, which were in use twenty 
years ago to designate that unknown agency which 
