t 
EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 217 
Venoms. —I have experimented upon the venom of the scorpio. 
This either liquid, dry or redissolved in wate*r, resists perfectly the ac¬ 
tion of compressed oxygen. We know, anyhow, that venoms owe their 
action to chemical substances analagous to vegetable alcaloid. 
Virus. —1st. Vaccine and Glanders .—The study of virus is evi¬ 
dently much more interesting. I begin it by vaccine and glanders. 
Fresh vaccinal liquid exposed for more than a week to the influence of 
oxygen to the highest pressure (corresponding to about 50 atmospheres 
of air), had kept all its power. Pus from glanders, placed in the same 
condition, killed rapidly horses inoculated with it. More than that, 
compressed oxygen having destroyed all the living agents, which would 
give rise to their putrefaction, these virus have been preserved in full 
activity for a long time, in the middle of the heat of summer. 
Consequently, neither glanders nor vaccine owe their virulent pro¬ 
perties to living beings or cells ; that there is an agent which by this 
character approaches the diastatic substances. 
This conclusion does not seem to contradict with the experiments 
by which M. Chauveau proved that the virulent action of the virus of 
vaccine or glanders exists in the corpuscles they hold in suspension. 
It is possible that the toxic produce be in that peculiar state of 
precipitation; or that, though dissolved, it impregnates exclusively these 
little bodies, as the hematocristalline of the blood, so soluble in the 
% 
serum, attaches itself exclusively upon the globules. 
But it is certain that these corpuscles—vehicles of the virulency— 
are no living bodies, and that they do not act as such in the organisms 
where they are inoculated. 
Anthrax. —From the investigations of M. Davaine, pathologists 
have accepted the idea that anthrax is due to the development in the 
blood of myriads of little bodies named baderidies ; there would be a 
kind of microparasitic disease, or, better, a kind of ultra-sanguineous 
fermentation producing death. 
But the use of compressed oxygen does not seem to sanction this. 
Indeed, carbuncular blood, placed in thin layers to elevated press¬ 
ure of oxygen, had preserved its virulency, as manifested by the death, 
for several successive generations, of the Guinea pigs which were inoc¬ 
ulated; but the blood of these animals did not contain any bacteridies,* 
But before stopping to conclusions in such a matter, the subject of 
so much controversy, I desired to try an entirely different method, and 
* On account of the difficulty in obtaining the blood of animals who had died of anthrax, this ex¬ 
periment was made only once. 
