378 Notes on the Vibrio Family. 



NOTES ON THE VIBRIO FAMILY. 



BY HENRY J. SLACK, E.G.S., 



Member of the Microscopic Society of London. 



In my remarks on the vinegar plant in the last number of the 

 Intellectual Observer, I expressed doubts, which I believe 

 most microscopists feel, with respect to the naming and iden- 

 tifying of the various objects that may be roughly described 

 as belonging to the so-called Vibrio family ; and while acceding 

 generally to the views of M. Pasteur, that such bodies are 

 agents of putrefaction and fermentation, I observed that if 

 his statements should be confirmed, and it should be found 

 that one set of these bodies live in oxygen, and perform one 

 set of functions, while another set dies in it and perform 

 another set of functions, we might distinguish them by habit, 

 if not by appearance. 



So able an observer as M. Pasteur is scarcely likely to be 

 in error, when he tells us that he has discovered organisms of 

 this kind that live and multiply without oxygen, and others 

 that live and multiply in connection with it; but when he 

 states that the objects arranged by Ehrenberg as six species* 

 of vibrions, are all ferments of putrefaction, and perish in 

 contact with pure oxygen, we may, without in the least im- 

 pugning the value of his researches, doubt if he could tell by 

 microscopic examination whether certain vibrio bodies be- 

 longed to the race of dwellers in oxygen, or to those whom 

 it kills. These doubts are strengthened by a paper recently 

 read before the French Academy by M. J. Lemaire, who dis- 

 putes many of M. Pasteur's propositions, and recounts the 

 following experiments : — He saturated many infusions that 

 were rich in vibrions with carbonic acid, and then sealed up 

 the tubes containing them. At the end of forty-eight hours 

 most of the " animals," as he carelessly calls them, were 

 motionless, and on the sixth day all were dead. He adds, 

 " M. Pasteur states that the bacteriums absorb oxygen, and 

 that vibrions live in carbonic acid. I do not accept this 

 theory, relying on the experiments cited, and considering the 

 bacterium termo and the vibrio lineola to be the same animal in 

 a different degreo of development." (< How," he asks, " can we 

 believe that the animal that is a bacterium in the morning, and 

 a vibrion some hours later, can live *under conditions so 

 different V" 



M. Lemaire exhibited to the Academy sevoral closed vessels 

 containing ft little air and putrcscible matters, and from tho 



* In tho Marr-h number, p. 239, for "Ehrenberg constituted six genera of 

 vibrions," read six species. 



