HERTFORDSHIRE LATERAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
XI 
What Jenner had done for small-pox, Pasteur has done for 
hydrophobia, and even more. The discovery of a cure for this 
terrible disease was not, of course, a sudden one, hut had been led 
up to by a series of experiments and studies during forty years. 
In the course of investigations he found that certain substances,, 
identical in composition, were possessed of very different properties. 
Por instance, he proved that there were two kinds of tartaric acid, 
and he further discovered that these could he separated by certain 
treatment during the process of fermentation. Led thus to study 
minutely the nature of fermentation, he found it to be due to the 
presence and the action of minute organisms, and that if these were 
excluded no fermentation went on. This led him to the discovery 
that the air was full of germs or seeds of disease, and it was this 
discovery which had suggested to the eminent surgeon, Lister, the 
antiseptic treatment which had since been used with such beneficial 
results. M. Pasteur set himself to cultivate these germs, and the 
idea then occurred to him that there might be some mearis of 
modifying them, as other plants were modified under culture. 
This he found was possible, and consequently that he could 
inoculate persons so as to protect them against certain diseases, 
for his discovery was that virus, by the conditions of special culture, 
might be reduced to a condition in which it was no longer injurious 
to animals inoculated with it. His attention was for some time 
occupied with the study of a disease of silkworms, which had 
wrought great havoc with the silk trade of the south of Prance, 
and this he was completely successful in curing. He then entered 
upon the study of a disease of fowls, known in Prance as “ chicken 
cholera.” Microscopical examination showed that the blood and 
tissues of fowls thus diseased were filled with organisms known as 
bacilli, characterized in this case by a short stump-shaped body, 
nearly as broad as long and rounded at both ends. Healthy fowls 
inoculated with a trace of this blood, fell sick and died within a 
few hours, and the blood of this second creature contained innumer¬ 
able microbes. These microbes could be cultivated artificially in 
chicken broth, but however many times the transference of virus 
from one animal to another took place, they lost none of their 
virulence. The artificially raised microbes, however, when exposed 
to pure air, gradually lost their poisonous qualities until they were 
no longer injurious, and animals having been inoculated with this 
attenuated form of virus were protected against the most virulent 
action of the poison. 
Pasteur’s attention was then directed to anthrax in cattle, sheep, 
and sometimes human beings, and this disease was discovered to be 
produced by long intermatted filament-shaped organisms. His cure 
on the same principle for this disease was completely successful, 
and at the present time his system of inoculation was used 
to an enormous extent in Prance. Since 1881, no less than 
1,700,000 sheep and 90,000 oxen had been inoculated and thus 
protected. Last year the figures were 262,599 sheep and 34,464 
oxen. The mortality in sheep in districts where anthrax prevailed 
