730 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
inferior beings. Consequently putrefaction would at first be 
established on the surface, after which it would gradually pro¬ 
ceed to the interior. Let us consider the entire carcass ot an 
animal abandoned after death to itself, either in contact with 
the air, or excluded from it. The whole surface is covered 
with dust, carried by the air, that is to say, the germ of the 
inferior organism. Its intestinal canal, where principally 
the faecal matter is formed, is filled, not only with germs, 
but with vibrions fully developed, which Leeuwenhoek has 
already noticed. These vibrions are in advance of the germs 
on the surface of the body. They are in the state of adult 
individuals deprived of air, bathed in liquid, and fast multi¬ 
plying, and also in full activity. It is through them that the 
putrefaction of the body, which has hitherto been preserved 
by vitality and the nutrition of the organs, begins. Such is 
the progress in the different forms of putrefaction. 
The ensemble of the facts which I have enumerated will 
hereafter be published in a memoir, with all the experi¬ 
mental proofs belonging to them, but these facts might be 
misunderstood or misinterpreted if I were not to add a few 
developments from them, "which the academy will no doubt 
excuse. Let us consider, in order better to fix our ideas, a 
voluminous mass of muscular flesh. What would happen if 
putrefaction were prevented on the outside of it ? Would this 
flesh preserve its structure and quality during the first hours? 
Such a result cannot be expected; it is, in fact, impossible, at 
ordinary temperature, to subtract the interior parts of this 
flesh from the reactions of the solids and the liquids on each 
other.* There will always be a force or power in operation, 
say of contact, an action of diastasis (if I am allowed this ex¬ 
pression) which developes in the interior of the piece of flesh 
small quantities of new substances which will add to the 
flavour of it their own proper flavour. Many things may 
oppose the putrefaction of the superficial layer. It would 
suffice, for instance, to envelope it with some linen soaked 
in alcohol, and to place it afterwards in a close vessel (with 
or without air, it matters not). As long as the evaporation 
of the alcohol does not take place, putrefaction will not set 
in, neither in the interior, because the germs of the vibrions 
are absent, nor on the exterior, because the alcoholic vapour 
is opposed to the development of the germs on the surface. 
But I have ascertained that meat becomes tainted when 
* In other words, death does not extinguish the reaction of the liquids, 
and solids in the organism. A sort of chemical life, if I may so express 
myself, continues to go on, in the same way as a fruit which ripens after 
being removed from the tree. Gangrene is a phenomenon of the same 
order. 
