218 
A. LIAUTARD. 
while in the way of propagation in the body of the living animal. 
Bnt no matter, as this hypothesis supposes the existence, pri¬ 
mordial and necessary of the vibrio 
This supposition was made, and to confirm it numerous works 
were undertaken on the other side of the Rhine. 
Doctor Panum, to-day Professor at Copenhagen, and after 
him several German physiologists, remained convinced of the 
idea that putrefaction develops in matters submitted to it, a solu¬ 
ble poison that neither coction nor a repeated distillation of sev¬ 
eral hours can alter in its properties, no more than chemical 
reactions of this order could prevent the effects of morphine or 
strychnine. This chemical poison is called by Dr. Bergmann 
and his followers by the name of sepsine. We have looked for 
it in the muscles and the liquids of the bodies of animals which 
had died with septicaemia; we have failed to find it yet, but we 
believe that we have the explanation of the facts observed by the 
German physiologists. The details which would be necessary to 
explain this, would carry me beyond the limits of this communi¬ 
cation. 
I have often said before this Academy, that there exists mi¬ 
croscopic-ferments beings, with peculiar physiological properties, 
beginning at the mycoderma aceti , essentially aerobic, to the yeast 
of beer, which is at the same time aerobic and anaerobic; and I 
have often insisted on this circumstance, that the life which mani¬ 
fests itself, even for a very short time, outside of all participa¬ 
tion from free oxygen gas, carries at the same time phenomena 
of fermentation. 
We have met in the vibrio ^f septicaemia, a microbe exclu¬ 
sively anaerobic, as it develops itself only in a vacuum or in pres¬ 
ence of inert gases. It must be a ferment. It is such. As long 
as the multiplication of the vibrio by scissiparity lasts, its life is 
accompanied with a giving-off of carbonic acid gas, of hydrogen 
gas, of a little of nitrogen, and of very small quantities of putrid 
gases. The production of these gases takes place only when the 
transformation of the vibrio into corpuscles-gerrns is about to 
take place. 
This formation of gases during the life of the vibrio, explains 
