178 ARE CERTAIN EPIDEMIC DISEASES CAUSED BY INFUSORIA ? 
state free from those minute organisms, but that, when in 
this state, it destroys them. I have made experiments on 
myself, in a state of health, in order to ascertain if a diet 
exclusively vegetable or animal influences the development of 
those infusoria in the faeces. These experiments, which gave 
negative results, have since acquired vast importance. Suffer¬ 
ing, some months later, from a violent attack of cholera, I 
again studied those faecal matters, eight days after the com¬ 
mencement of the attack. I then found in them, at the 
moment of their expulsion, myriads of Bacteria, and of 
Vibriones, linear and chained, many of the latter having seven 
rings. I found also Spirillum volutans, Monads, and Cerco- 
monas crassicauda. This observation, when compared with 
those preceding, is important, but it becomes still more so by 
a third inquiry which I have made. Two months after the 
commencement of my disease, being entirely restored to 
health, I examined the excrements with a microscope, and 
found no infusoria. It was therefore to the cholera that their 
presence was due. 
After an abundant perspiration, I collected matter on 
different parts of the skin, and proved the existence in it of 
spores analogous to those I have described in my memoir on 
the ^Nature of Miasmata,^ a considerable number of Bacteria, 
and some small Vibriones. Having omitted, for a week, to 
cleanse my mouth, I found in its secretions an abundance of 
Bacteria, Vibriones, Spirillum, and Monads. Taking off a 
flannel vest, worn during four days, I had it washed while 
still warm and moist, in a small quantity of distilled water. 
I immediately examined the liquid under the microscope, 
and found in it the same species of microphytes and microzoa, 
whose existence on the skin I had already proved. 
Blood taken, during life, from man and other animals 
suffering from typhus, or smallpox, and containing Bacteria 
and Vibriones, has been inoculated or injected into the veins 
of healthy dogs, sheep, and rabbits. Bacteria and Vibriones 
became multiplied in them, producing formidable symptoms, 
generally followed by death. Comparative experiments, made 
by MM. Coze and Feltz with blood taken from a healthy 
man, prove that under those conditions no increase of tem¬ 
perature nor disturbance is produced. 
If the infusoria in putrefying matter be destroyed, as I 
have destroyed them for a long time past with different sub¬ 
stances, not only is the fermentation abruptly stopped, but 
the matter is prevented from exciting it again in other bodies 
by emanation, by contact, or by inoculation. Instead of 
