100 Pasteur's Researches on Putrefaction. 



Hill. Of course, we are not maintaining that the regular and 

 beautiful appearance of the Isle of Staffa, or the north of 

 Antrim, is reproduced in South Staffordshire ; but the 

 approach is so near in the case of Pouk Hill that it seems 

 worthy of more than mere local record. A few years hence, 

 and the quarry will doubtless be worked out ; and indeed we 

 very much question if a section equal to the one recently 

 exposed will again be witnessed, as the basalt is being 

 rapidly exhausted, and hardly a day passes without some 

 of the columns being demolished. 



PASTEUR'S RESEARCHES ON PUTREFACTION. 



The following paper was read before the French Academy on 

 the 29th June, and will be found in the Comjytes Rendus for 

 that date : — 



" In every case in which animal or vegetable matter under- 

 goes spontaneous alteration and develops fetid gases, putrefac- 

 tion is said to occur. We shall perceive in the course of our 

 examination that this definition has two opposite defects. It 

 is too general, because it brings together phenomena that are 

 essentially distinct ; and it is too restricted, because it separates 

 others which have the same nature and origin. 



" The interest and utility of an exact study of putrefaction 

 has never been misunderstood. Long ago it was hoped it 

 might lead to practical consequences in the treatment of 

 maladies which the old physicians termed putrid. Such was 

 the idea that guided the celebrated English physician Pringlo 

 when he published, in the middle of the last century, his 

 experiments on matters septic and antiseptic, with a view to 

 illustrate his observations on the diseases of armies. 



" Unfortunately the disgust inseparable from labours of this 

 kind, joined to their evident complication, has hitherto arrested 

 the majority of experimenters, so that nearly everything has 

 still to be done. My researches on fermentation have naturally 

 conducted me towards this study. . . . The most general 

 deduction from my experiments being that putrefaction is de- 

 termined by organic ferments of the genus Vibrio. Eln-enberg 

 has described six species of vibrio, to which he gives tho fol- 

 lowing names : — 



1. Vibrio lineola. 4. Vibrio rugula. 



2. Vibrio tremulans. 5. Vibrio prolifer. 

 S. Vibrio subtilis. 0. Vibrio bacillus. 



"These six species, in part recognized by the first micro- 

 graphers in llie last centuries, have been since seen by all who 



