240 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
one has discovered in the beginning of the infection some of 
these corpuscles, they are then very short and few, but they 
are soon seen to multiply and grow rapidly, their complete 
evolution being accomplished in a very few hours. A rabbit, 
in the blood of which were found but a few Bacteria, not 
more than from the fourth to the sixth of the thousandth 
part of a millimetre in length, died at the end of four hours. 
Its blood, examined immediately after, contained a con¬ 
siderable number of Bacteria, some of which were the longest 
I had yet seen. They had attained the length of the five 
hundredth part of the millemetre. In some animals these 
corpuscles are generally longer than in ordinary cases; but 
they present no other difference, and their number is then 
generally less. The length which these filaments sometimes 
acquire would induce one to class them among the conserves ; 
but I leave this question for the present, as it has but little 
importance. The number of the Bacteria is very variable in 
one animal as compared with another. After my first inocu¬ 
lation, the number decreased rapidly, and became from eight 
to ten times less than that of the corpuscles of the blood. 
From this I am led to think that the power of propagation 
was weaker in the rabbit, but I was convinced afterwards that 
this was not the case; in fact, in a series of eleven indi¬ 
viduals successively inoculated one from the other, the tenth 
presented myriads of Bacteria in its blood, the same as 
the first. I cannot explain the reason of these variations 
otherwise than by the temperature, which rose and fell 
during the time of the experiments. From the moment the 
animal dies the Bacteria cease to multiply and increase in 
size. In the blood preserved out of the blood-vessels they 
perish, or transform themselves at all events; and when they 
lose their primitive form they cease to multiply in the living 
animal. Two inoculations, one with the blood of a sheep 
preserved eight days, the other with the blood of a rabbit, 
preserved six days, produced neither the malady nor Bac¬ 
teria. When the blood is quickly dried in the open air, the 
Bacteria preserve the power of inoculation. This I have 
ascertained by several experiments. This dried blood can 
resist a heat from 95° to 100° without losing its power. 
Fresh blood was put into a tube, and left for ten minutes in 
boiling water; this blood was afterwards introduced under 
the skin of a rabbit, which died thirty-one hours after, with 
Bacteria in the blood. Ebullition, therefore, does not des¬ 
troy their vitality. Of fourteen rabbits, the average duration 
of life after inoculation was forty hours; the shortest being 
eighteen hours, the longest seventy-seven. This duration is 
longer in the adult and old animals than in the young. In 
