PRINCIPLES OF VETERINARY SURGERY 397 



water from the Saone, when, in winter, it was muddy and 

 swollen. Before the work of Chauveau and Arloing, Pro- 

 fessor Nocard, who has found the bacillus septicus in the 

 tissues of animals that have died of gaseous gangrene, ad- 

 mitted that the disease is caused by Pasteur's microbe. Al- 

 though the experimenters of Lyons affirmed that it was im- 

 possible to differentiate between the septic vibrion and the 

 microbe of gangrene, their ideas were not admitted without 

 contest. In Germany, Vicklein wrote that gangrenous sep- 

 ticaemia can be caused by bacteria analogous to, but not 

 identical with the bacillus septicus. Frankel is said to have 

 found an agent very different from the vibrion of Pasteur 

 in the lesions of malignant oedema, and to have reproduced 

 a grave inflammation with gas and without pus, by sub- 

 cutaneous inoculation of a cavy. Whatever he thought of 

 these divergent results, the whole world admits the identity 

 of the septic vibrio and the microbe of gangrenous sep- 

 ticaemia as settled. 



What is the behavior of the vibrion of Pasteur in the tis- 

 sues that it should cause death? This question, although 

 very simple to solve or decide today in certain infectious 

 diseases, is not completely brought to light in this disease. 

 It is based upon the researches that have established the 

 properties of microbian secretions. Some have thought its 

 action is due to a veritable intoxication, but the researches 

 of Roux and Chamberland have demonstrated that such is 

 not the case. These authors have in fact tried to kill cavies 

 with filtered serum of animals that died of the disease, and 

 they did not obtain positive results from injections of con- 

 siderable doses. Before the failure of these experiments 

 one was obliged to admit that microbian intoxications were 

 almost exclusively attributed to the bacteria, and what gives 

 this conclusion more force is the fact that injection of pure 

 cultures into the veins confers immunity to, instead of kill- 



