216 
A. LIAUTARD. 
personally I have the greatest confidence that M. Pasteur, with the cer¬ 
tainty of its judgment and of its methods, will succeed in solving all 
the difficulties of the complicated problem whose solution he has under¬ 
taken. 
THE USE OF OXYGEN AT HIGH PRESSURE AS MEANS OF 
PHYSIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION—VENOMS AND VIRUS. 
By M. P. Bert * 
Some yeais ago, I announced that oxygen at high pressure pro¬ 
duces the rapid death of all living bodies, or to specify better of all 
anatomic elements, whether isolated as it happens for the blood corpus¬ 
cles and microscopic bodies, or grouped as the constitutive tissues of 
complex organisms. Specially observing the numerous phenomena 
known as fermentation, I established that all those whose condition of 
development was the presence of a living body (putrefaction, acetifica- 
tion of wine, alcoholic fermentation), were definitively arrested by the 
action, even transitory, of compressed oxygen, while all fermentations 
due to the action ol a dissolved matter (diastasis, pancreatine, myrosine, 
emulsme,) resist perfectly that influence. 
Ihis new method of analysis, I already stated, may be usefully 
applied to the study of physiological problems. The carbunculous 
blood, that of the infectious diseases, the pathological fluids, virus, 
venoms, do they owe their action to corpuscles analogous to the true 
ferments, or to an alteration of the liquids acting as a diastasic ferment? 
ie results observed after the sojourn in compressed oxygen will throw 
on this question new light. 
Some of these results I beg to present to-day to the Academie. 
Ripening and Mellowing of Fruits .—Experience proves that after a 
stay of several hours in compressed oxygen, fruits whose ripening can 
ecome perfect when off the tree, are indefinitely preserved, but ceased 
the process of npening; while those which are susceptible of mellowing 
undergo this process even when in compressed oxygen, and this faster 
than when exposed to ordinary free atmospherical air. It is thus demon- 
strated 1st. That npening is the result of a cellular development; 2d. 
tat mellowing is due either to the action of a soluble ferment, at first 
substances ^ ^ C£US ° f ** ^ ° r t0 a direct ox y dation of Peculiar 
* Extract from the Comptes rendus de l’Academie 
des Sciences, Paris, May 21st, 1877. 
