PACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
613 
asserts that it possesses some influence over the virus of 
glanders. He is of opinion that the acid prevents the repro¬ 
duction of the virus, and thus the disease is not communi¬ 
cated. The power, he adds, that carbolic acid possesses of 
destroying a virus is the more remarkable, since cauterization, 
whether by the actual cautery or potassa fusa, does not 
prevent the effects of inoculation. M. Renault inoculated 
with glander virus thirteen horses, and the places were after¬ 
wards cauterized with the actual cautery at intervals varying 
from one hour to four days after the inoculation. All the 
horses, however, became glandered, and died. Some sheep 
were inoculated with the virus of smallpox ; and although the 
actual cautery and potassa fusa were both subsequently 
applied, they all took the disease. The corrective power of 
the acid was also by experiment ascertained over the poison 
of the bee and the venom from a toad. 
Difference between Putrefaction and Gan¬ 
grene. —M. Pasteur avers that neither in their origin nor 
in their nature is there any resemblance between putrefac¬ 
tion and gangrene. Gangrene, instead of being a putrefac¬ 
tion properly so called, appears to be that condition of an 
organ in which one part is preserved, in spite of death, from 
putrefaction, and in which the liquids and solids act and 
react, chemically and physically, beyond the normal actions 
of nutrition. Putrefaction begins at the surface, and after¬ 
wards reaches the interior of a solid mass. By the aid of 
vibriones this process commences and is carried on, the body 
having been preserved up to this time by life and the nutri¬ 
tion of its organs. 
Infusoria. —The researches ofEhrenberg have sufficiently 
proved the presence in the air, in some localities, of infusorial 
organisms, as those of L. Pasteur, of Lille, and others, have 
demonstrated spores of fungi and germs of vibriones to be of 
frequent occurrence in certain atmospheres. It must not, 
however, be inferred from such observations that these micro¬ 
scopic beings are of themselves sources of impurity or capable 
of reproducing it. On the contrary, they are merely attend¬ 
ants on foulness otherwise derived, and, like confervoid vege¬ 
tation in water, are, during their processes of life and pro¬ 
pagation, sources of the purest oxygen gas. Unfitted for 
existing, except in impurity, they would seem destined, by 
their mode of being, to act as one of the natural means of 
purification in circumstances of extreme pollution. 
