ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO PUTREFACTION AND INFECTION. 
71 
subjected apparently to precisely the same conditions will cease to be an inscrutable 
mystery to the surgeon *. 
During the course of this inquiry some eminent biologists have been good enough, 
from time to time, to look in upon my work, and to give me their views regarding 
the evidential force of the experiments. To Professor Huxley, moreover, I am indebted 
for undertaking the examination of a number of the hermetically sealed tubes. Thirty 
of them were placed in his hands, none of them being regarded as defective. A close 
examination, however, disclosed in one of them a mycelium. No faultiness could for 
a time be discovered in the tube ; the sealing appeared to be quite as perfect as that 
of its sterile fellows. Once, however, on shaking it a minute drop of liquid struck my 
friend’s face ; and he soon discovered that an orifice of microscopic minuteness had been 
left open in the nozzle of the tube. Through this the common air had been sucked in 
as the liquid cooled, and hence the contamination. It was the only defective tube of 
the group of thirty, and it alone showed signs of life. 
The statement of this fact before the Royal Society, by Prof. Huxley, brought to my 
mind a somewhat similar experience of my own. One morning in November I lifted 
one of the hermetically sealed tubes from the wire on which it was suspended, and, 
holding it up against the light, discovered, to my astonishment, a beautiful mycelium 
flourishing at the bottom. Before restoring the tube to its place I touched its fused end 
and found it sharp. Close inspection showed that the nozzle had been broken off; the 
common air had entered, and the seed of the mycelium had been sown. Two other 
instances, one like that observed by Prof. Huxley, have since come to light. In one of 
them a minute orifice remained after the supposed sealing of the tube. The other case 
was noticed when the tubes were returned from the Turkish Bath. One of them con- 
tained a luxuriant mycelium. It was noticed that the liquid in this tube had singularly 
diminished in quantity, and on turning the tube up it was found cracked at the bottom. 
No case of pseudo-spontaneous generation ever occurred under my hands that was not 
to he accounted for in an equally satisfactory manner. 
In this inquiry, thus far, I have confined my observations to purely liquid infusions, 
purposely excluding milk, mixtures of turnip-juice and cheese, and, indeed, mixtures of 
* “ We have ample facts of experiment in our hands,” said Mr. Knowsley Thornton (Trans, of the Patho- 
logical Society, vol. xxvi. p. 313), “ to show that it is not the gases of the air, or any soluble material in water, hut 
something ‘ particulate ’ which sets up all the train of changes in an open wound, which may, after the patient 
has passed through a period of more or less constitutional disturbance, end in the healing of the wound, or may 
end in septicaemia and death. This particulate material, then, I believe we have evidence enough to prove 
consists of germs of Bacteria and other low organisms.” All the evidence points to this conclusion. I may 
say that I entirely agree with Mr. Thornton in the distinction he draws between germs and developed Bacteria 
floating in the air. It is, in my opinion, of the very last importance to seize this distinction with clearness. 
When it is fully realized we shall probably hear less of the arguments against Bacterial contagia founded 
on the fact that a virus diminishes in strength as the Bacteria multiply. A portion of the energy of the virus 
consists in its passage from the germ state to that of the finished organism. 
