t 
TRANSDATION. 
213 
THE GERMS THEORY. 
ITS APPLICATION TO MEDICINE AND SURGERY, 
By M. M. Pasteur, Chamberjland and Joubert. 
Translated by A. Liautard, M.D., V.S. 
All sciences gain by assisting each other. When, after my 
first communication on fermentations, in 1857-’58, one could 
admit that ferments, properly so-called, were living beings, that 
germs of microscopic organisms exist in abundance on the sur¬ 
face of all objects, in the atmosphere, and in waters, that the 
hypothesis of a spontaneous generation is actually chimerical, 
that wines, beer, vinegar, blood, urine, and all the liquids of the 
organism undergo any of their common alterations to the con¬ 
tact of pure air, the medicine and surgery paid attention to these 
new lights. A French physician, Dr. Davaine, made the first 
happy application of these principles to medicine in 1863. 
Our researches of last year have left the aetiology of the pu¬ 
trid disease or septicemia much less advanced than that of an¬ 
thrax. We have rendered as most probable that septicemia 
results from the presence and multiplication of a microscopic 
organism, but the rigorous demonstration of this important con¬ 
clusion remained undone. To affirm experimentally that a mi¬ 
croscopic organism is really agent of disease and of contagion, I 
see no other way, in the actual state of science, than to submit 
the microbe (new and happy expression proposed by Mr. Sedillot) 
to the method of successive cultivations outside of the economy. 
Let us note that by twelve cultivations, each of a volume of ten 
cubic centimeters only, the original drop is diluted as much as if 
it had been in a liquid volume equal to the total volume of the 
earth. It is precisely the kind of experiments to which Mr. 
Joubert and I have submitted the carbuncular bacteridie. After 
cultivating it a great number of times in a liquid free from any 
virulent property, each cultivation having for seed a small drop 
