from an Agricultural and Veterinary Point of View. 83 
lining membrane of the intestines prevents their passage through 
it ; but after death this resistance ceases, and the anaerobic 
bodies then begin to exercise their decomposing influence, and 
carry on the process of putrefaction — penetrating into the tissues 
and the blood as soon as that has lost its oxygen. In splenic 
fever, the blood is deprived of much of its oxygen during the 
course of the disease, so that, after death, decomposition is very 
rapid. The germs or vibrions which most readily and rapidly 
pass to the blood after death, are the septic or putrefactive, 
which cause the evolution of most fetid gases, by their action 
upon nitrogenous and superfluous matters. So that after twelve 
or fifteen hours, the blood of a diseased animal, which, at the 
time of its death, and for a few hours after, contained only the 
bacillus of anthrax, has now, in addition, the septic vibrio. 
The two are antagonistic, inasmuch as the anthrax bacillus, 
being aerobic, soon perishes in blood destitute of oxygen ; 
while the septic, being anaerobic, is, on the contrary, in the 
most favourable condition for development, and speedily invades 
all the fluids and solids of the body. From this circumstance, 
it happens that if a drop of blood is taken from the body of an 
animal that has just died from anthrax fever, and is inoculated 
into a healthy animal before it has had time to putrefy, anthrax 
fever only will result. But if, on the contrary, the operation is 
performed after a longer time, when putrefaction has taken 
place in the blood, then inoculation will produce at one and 
the same time splenic fever and septicaemia, or putridity of the 
blood : both being developed simultaneously, or one before the 
other, usually septicaemia — the septic vibrio causing death before 
the anthrax bacillus has had time to multiply in sufficient 
numbers to bring about such a result. This affords an explana- 
tion of the diff"erent conclusions arrived at by the experi- 
mentalists. Jaillard and Deplat had obtained blood which was 
more or less putrid, and therefore contained the vibrios of putre- 
faction mixed with the organisms of splenic fever ; it was 
therefore septicaemia, and not anthrax which had killed the 
rabbits ; and in examining their blood the septic vibrios had 
escaped notice, while no bacilli were observed. So that when 
Da vaine asserted that these two opponents had not used pure 
anthrax blood, he was right, though he could not give his 
reasons. Bert's apparently contradictory result was also ac- 
counted for in the same way ; he had employed blood which 
was more or less putrid, and as the spores of the septic vibrio 
perlcctly resist the influence of compressed oxygen, these had 
not been killed, while the filaments of bacilli and septic vibrios 
had perished. The inoculated animals died from these spores. 
To prove that this was so, Pasteur resorted to the method of 
O 2 
