696 
D. E. SALMON. 
His alleged discovery of the germ of yellow fever is only 
another example of the same ridiculous blundering. He 
claimed to have found the organism described by Babes, in 
1885, i n specimens from seven cases of yellow fever, and that 
in only one case was there any pollution. Of these investi¬ 
gations he wrote : “ I am willing to risk some considerable 
reputation that the germ herein described as present in all 
this material is the specific cause of yellow fever, as well as 
that the description of the morpho-biological phenomena pre¬ 
sented by the germ of the southern cattle-plague will largely 
be found applicable to this” (Original Investigations of Cat¬ 
tle Diseases in Nebraska, 1886-1889, p. 116). 
Now what are the facts about this ? In his recent report 
Sternberg gives a history of this material, and of the results 
of a careful examination of it by different experts. The 
bacillus of Babes, alleged by Billings to be present “in every 
section and in great numbers,” is conclusively shown to have 
been absent from the specimens which he referred to with 
greatest confidence, and probably did not exist in any of the 
specimens which he examined. These specimens did contain 
the bacterium coli commune and other organisms which repre¬ 
sented a post-mortem invasion of the tissue (Report on the 
Etiology and Prevention of Yellow Fever, by George M. 
Sternberg, Washington, 1890, pp. 176-180). His identifica¬ 
tion of the Babes germ is therefore on a par with his identi¬ 
fication of his swine-plague germ in the photograph sent him 
by Shakespeare, and his much vaunted yellow fever investi¬ 
gations turn out to be a farce of the most absurd character. 
To come back to Billings’ opinion of the slide sent him by 
Detmers, it can be seen that it was formed with the same 
kind of evidence as his opinion of the Shakespeare photo¬ 
graph and of the yellow fever germs. As evidence of the 
kind of germ, this opinion, from the nature of the case, can 
have no weight, but as evidence of the care or lack of care 
shown in reaching his conclusions it is incontestible. 
Detmers, who studied the germ from which the slide, was 
made, both in cultures and by the inoculation of a rabbit, 
decided that it was entirely different from his swine-plague, 
