256 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
Schulze, of that district, who died in 1854, had 
never met with a single case of it during his long 
practice of fifty years. Our own author, moreover, 
passed his work through six editions, each supposed 
to be revised up to the latest state of knowledge, 
without so much as mentioning the name of foul 
brood. 
During the past six or eight years the Germans 
—to whom we have still to look for all our larger 
advances in apiarian science—have been deter- 
minedly investigating the real nature and origin of 
this pest. To Dr. Preuss belongs the credit of 
showing that a certain thread-like fungus, to which 
he gave the name of micrococcus—so minute that a 
single cell would contain some thousands of billions 
—is invariably present im the infected larve; and, 
after him, Pastor (now Dr.) Schonfeld carried on 
further investigations, with the assistance of Drs. 
Cohn and Eidam, the former of whom detected, 
amongst the above corpuscles, a multitude of other 
thread-like growths, which he at once pronounced 
to be bacteria—forms of life till lately set down as 
infusoria, but now regarded as fungi, and which are 
known to be present in various epidemic diseases 
both of human beings and of cattle. When this was 
made public, scientific men at once turned to a 
remedy which was known to be efficacious in destroy- 
ing these bacteria in other cases; and in a short 
time bee-keepers were rejoiced to learn that by 
the use of salicylic acid they were put in a position 
to cope with a plague before which they had 
hitherto bowed in utter hopelessness. 
