EXTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
219 
This proof was so much more necessary that numerous discussions 
had already taken place, even before the Academie, because experiment¬ 
ers had always mistaken anthrax with another contagious affection— 
septicaemia. 
M. Bert has made two different experiments, one with compressed 
oxygen, the other with absolute alcohol. Not having repeated the first, 
I cannot say anything of it ; but the second I have made several times 
over, some years ago, and have obtained results entirely opposite to 
those of M. Bert. When I began investigation on these questions, I 
went to work like M. Bert coagulating the blood with alcohol and intro¬ 
ducing the magma under the skin. The animals died, not of anthrax, 
but of septicaemia. 
After finding that one millionth of a drop of carbunculous blood 
was sufficient to kill a Guinea pig, I made the two following experiments 
(9th of August, 1873): 
1st. I took some blood of an animal who had recently died with 
anthrax, consequently free of all putrefaction, and mixed it with 1,000 
parts of water. A part of this fluid was then mixed in 10 parts of 
ordinary alcohol. After half an hour, with the needle of Pravaz, I in¬ 
jected one drop of this mixture under the skin of a Guinea pig. Fie 
continued to enjoy a perfect health. 
2d. A second experiment gave the same result, though the contact of 
the virulent liquid with the alcohol did not last more than two minutes. 
Still in these two experiments, one ten thousandth of a drop of 
carbunculous blood having been injected, both animals ought to have 
died if the virus had not been destroyed. 
Therefore, if alcohol destroys the virus of carbunculous affection, 
M. Bert has not produced this disease in the animals he successively 
inoculated. But the results he has obtained are explained by the 
method of inoculation he had employed, and to the dangers of which I 
have already called attention. 
When a putrescible substance, carbunculous or not, is introduced 
under the skin by a wound which remains open, most generally the 
animal dies with septicaemia, contagious disease like anthrax, but not 
identical to it and different from it by one of its distinctive characters 
—the*absence of bacteridies. 
The same cause of error has existed in the first experiment of M. 
Bert. Still I must repeat in this occasion that the degree of septicity 
of the putrified blood is not in proportion to the intensity of its odor. 
In some conditions this odor may be slight, and still the virulency ex- 
