OF PUTREFACTION AND OTHER FERMENTATIVE CHANGES. 343 
seven weeks previously with another very delicate filamentous fungus, which I 
must not here describe. The species had developed very luxuriantly, so as to 
occupy the greater part of the liquid with its white woolly growth, and clamber 
some distance up the inside of the glass above. Yet the colour of the fluid was 
scarcely altered at all, having a barely perceptible pale brownish tinge, and this 
circumstance made the great effect of the scanty growth of the Oidium Toruloides 
the more striking. Atthe same time, the dark brown liquid was entirely destitute 
of odour, and thus I obtained for the first time demonstration of what I have long 
suspected, as the result of experience in antiseptic surgery, viz., that an albumi- 
nous fluid may be affected with a fermentative change without the occurrence of 
smell. Ihave seen, for example, a psoas abscess furnish merely a slight oozing 
of serous discharge under antiseptic management, till a single careless applica- 
tion of the dressing admitted, as I believed, some fermentative organism, which, 
without giving rise to any odour, so altered the character of the discharge, as to 
stimulate the diseased part to profuse suppuration, leading to death by hectic. I 
have also observed erysipelas occur in spite of antiseptic treatment, and occasion 
profuse suppuration without smell, although from analogy there is reason to 
suspect that the virus of that disorder is of the nature of an organism, operating 
as a ferment upon the animal fluids. Facts such as these had often led me to 
express the view which at the time might be regarded as transcendental, but 
which the above observation proved to be a truth. 
Thus this single insignificant species, when subjected to the precise method 
of investigation which I have described, afforded proof of several important 
general truths, which may thus be recapitulated. 
1st, It shows how greatly such organisms may vary under the modifying 
influence of different media. 
2d, It affords another clear example of the origin of a torula from a filamen- 
tous fungus. 
3d, It shows that the corpuscular form of such an organism may differ in 
fermentative energy from its filamentous parent. 
4th, That the corpuscular habit of growth acquired in one medium may be 
retained for a considerable time after the organism has been restored to a habitat 
in which the corpuscular form did not originally present itself. 
5th, That when placed in a more favourable medium, the toruloid variety 
| may reproduce the purely filamentous. 
| 6th, This plant is another instance of an organism which is not bacteric, giving 
_ rise to a putrefactive fermentation in urine. , 
7th, It proves that an albuminous liquid may be affected with a fermentation 
| with inodorous products. 
| Lastly, The trustworthiness of the method of investigation is strikingly con- 
firmed by the fact, that in none of the glasses of PasrEur’s solution, urine, 

