408 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 
it was necessary to determine whether a microbic organism 
is essentially characteristic of this disease. 
M. Pasteur, in reply to M. Hervieux, showed that the 
disease termed pebrine, which occurs epizootically among 
silk-worms, used to be attributed to a miasma, but ex¬ 
perimentation has demonstrated that it is due to living 
beings. Cholera of fowls was similarly attributed to miasma, 
but M. Toussaint has shown that it is caused by a specific 
vibrio which can be cultivated, and which produces constant 
effects when introduced by inoculation into organisms which 
form media favourable for its development. With regard to 
this question of media, M. Pasteur thus drew attention to 
two important facts which are destined to throw some light 
on the still very obscure pathology of contagious diseases. 
I am going to draw attention to some facts which are 
remarkable and very obscure if we know nothing of the 
etiology of disease, but which become evident and naturally 
result from the light which the germ theory throws upon the 
subject. Inoculate fowls with the cultivated vibrio in a pure 
state, all, or at least the greater number, die in from twelve 
to forty-eight hours afterwards. Inoculate a number of 
guinea-pigs and many will not succumb, but all will have 
abscesses at the seat of inoculation. Remove a small portion 
of pus from an abscess of one of those inclined to recover, 
and you will find the pus capable of fresh development in 
favorable media, of producing death of fowls inoculated with 
it. What can be more complex than this if you fail to view 
it in the light thrown on it by the germ theory ? In the 
guinea-pig the microbic finds a medium less favorable to its 
development than in the fowl, hence its resulting lesions are 
localised, so to speak; but it is, nevertheless, in the abscess 
produced, ready under suitable circumstances to resume its 
original virulence. Also another remarkable fact is, that the 
organism is capable of culture in different infusions, but all 
culture fails in infusion of yeast, which, however, proves the 
very best medium for the Bacillus anthracis, for example. 
This fact leads to some confusion when applied in pathology.” 
If the miasmata of pebrine and of fowl cholera have now 
vanished, or rather, like the demon of Lesage’s romance, 
have been (< placed in a bottle,” always ready to act, and 
constant in their effects as soon as they are restored to the 
medium where they are capable of manifesting their activity, 
why can we not seize this unknown miasma of puerperal 
fever which M. Hervieux has brought forward ? Very 
possibly it may soon assume the form of a vibrio. Already 
M. Pasteur has given an idea of what it may be by drawing 
