FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
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diagrams. There is nothing like seeing things for yourself. 
If it be difficult to examine anything, as it is said to be, with 
a microscope, this seems to me a greater reason why there 
should be one at the Royal Veterinary College for the use of 
the students. 
Facts and Observations. 
Do Bacteriums cause Disease ?—In a former num¬ 
ber we gave an account of M. Davaine's experiments, in 
which death followed the inoculation of healthy animals with 
a few drops of blood containing bacteriums, and taken from 
other animals suffering from spleen disease. MM. Leplat 
and Jaillard have communicated counter experiments to the 
French Academy. They obtained bacteriums from vegetable 
and animal solutions, and introduced them into the circula¬ 
tion of animals without producing any evil effects. From 
this they conclude that in M. Davaine’s experiments it was 
the diseased blood, and not the bacteriums, that caused the 
mischief. 
The question is, however, far from settled by the new ex¬ 
periments, and their authors are by no means entitled to 
assume that, because vibrions are much alike in appearance, 
their properties must be the same. It would be more in 
accordance with observation to state exactly the contrary, and 
affirm that very similar bodies of this kind are connected 
with different kinds of fermentation and putrefaction. 
Fresh Experiments on Bacteriums and Disease.™ 
M. Davaine has communicated to the French Academy ano¬ 
ther series of experiments on the propagation of disease by 
inoculating with blood containing the bacteriums which he . 
affirms to be always present in spleen disease (sang de rate). 
The bacteriums causing the disease he proposes to call bac - 
terides, and, so far from their being identical with bodies of 
somewhat similar appearance, which act as ferments of putre¬ 
faction, he finds his bacterides perish when the blood putre¬ 
fies. He propagated the disease by causing animals to eat 
portions of the liver or other viscus removed from creatures 
