TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 191 
exhibited no spontaneous motion. The existence of the 
Bacteria in the blood of these two sheep more particularly 
fixed my attention, on account of the short space of time that 
elapsed between their death and our examination, principally 
in the second case, which leads me to think that these 
Bacteria were not the result of putrid decomposition of the 
blood, but that they were pre-existent to the death of the 
animals. I decided from that time to verify the fact of the 
existence of infusoria in the blood of animals affected with 
splenic apoplexy at the very first opportunity, and to discover 
whether the development of these microscopical beings might 
not be the cause of the deterioration of the blood, and conse¬ 
cutively of the death of the animal. This opportunity had 
not yet presented itself, and other business had likewise 
prevented me from more active researches, when M. Pasteur, 
in 1861, published his remarkable work on the butyric fer¬ 
ment, which consists in small cylindrical bodies, possessing all 
the characters of the vibrions or the Bacteria. The filiform 
corpuscles which I had seen in the blood of sheep attacked 
with splenic apoplexy having great similarity of form with 
these vibrions, I was induced to examine whether corpus¬ 
cles analogous or of the same species with those which 
determine the butyric fermentation, introduced into the blood 
of an animal, would not produce the same effect as a ferment. 
It would thus be easy to explain the rapid alteration of the 
mass of the blood in an animal which had either accidentally 
or experimentally received into its veins a certain number of 
these Bacteria, that is to say, of this ferment. These reflec¬ 
tions made me desire more ardently to re-examine the blood 
of animals, suffering from splenic apoplexy; but two summers 
had passed without my being able to procure a sheep affected 
with this malady. Lately, M. Diard, a distinguished doctor 
of medicine at Dourdan, informed me that the malady pre¬ 
vailed in his district; that a farmer had lost twelve sheep in 
ten days; and at my request he sent me the blood of one of 
these sheep. The blood exhibited no odour of putrefaction; 
it had the peculiar violet colour of the blood of apoplexy of 
the spleen, and examined under the microscope it was found 
to contain an immense number of Bacteria. They did not 
move, but were exactly like those I had observed in 1850. 
I inoculated immediately with this blood (21st of July, 
1863) two rabbits and a white rat, all in good health and 
vigorous, having their blood perfectly normal. Twenty-four 
hours after, these animals presented no change in their 
appearance ; their blood, being examined with great care, was 
found to be healthy, and contained no Bacteria. Forty- 
three hours after the inoculation, one of the rabbits was seen 
