Further researches on the deportment and vital persistence of putrefactive and infective organisms from a physical point of view / by John Tyndall.

  • John Tyndall
Date:
[1877]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further researches on the deportment and vital persistence of putrefactive and infective organisms from a physical point of view / by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/66 page 150
    tubes, its side windows wio, its pipette C, and its bent tubes ab, which connect the air of the chamber with the external air. In upwards of fifty chambers thus constructed, many of them used more than once, it was, without exception, proved that the sterilized infusion in contact with air shown to be self-cleanscd by the luminous beam remained sterile. Never, in a single unexplained instance, did such an infusion show any signs of life. That the observed sterility was not due to any lack of nutritive power in the infusion, was proved by opening the back door and permitting the uncleansed air to enter the chamber. The contact of the floating matter with the infusions was invariably followed by the development of life. Numerous examples of these results were placed before the Fellows of the Eoyal Society at their Meeting on the 13th of January, 1876. Prior to the date here referred to, great public interest had been excited, and, I may add, considerable scientific uncertainty had been produced in reference to this subject, both in England and America, by the writings of Dr. Bastian. These writings consisted, in part, of theoretic considerations and reflections, not new, but sometimes very ably stated, based on the general doctrine of Evolution, and, in part, of very pungent criti- cisms of those who, though believers in Evolution, declined to accept the writer’s programme of its operations*. Passing over both theory and criticism, I thought it wise to fix upon certain well-defined statements of fact which lay at the basis of the weighty superstructure raised by their author, and to bring these statements to the test of strict experiment. Thus it was affirmed “ that boiled turnip- or hay-infusions exposed to ordinary air, exposed to filtered air, to calcined air, or shut off altogether from contact with air, are more or less prone to swarm with Bacteria and Vihriones in the course of from two to six days”f. I resorted accordingly to filtered air, calcined air, and to infusions with- drawn from air, but failed to discover the alleged “ proneness ” to run into living forms. It had also been affirmed that infusions of muscle, kidney, or liver, placed “ in a flask whose neck is drawn out and narrowed in the blowpipe flame, boiled, sealed during ebullition, and kept in a warm place, swarmed after a variable time with Bacteria and allied organisms’’^. I resorted to such flasks, employing infusions of fish, flesh, fowl, and viscera, and on the 13th of January was able to place before the Iloyal Society one hundred and thirty of them, every one of which negatived the foregoing statement. Two objections were subsequently urged against these results. The infusions, it was contended, were not sufficiently concentrated, nor were the temperatures sufficiently high. Both these objections were met by the statement that forty-eight hours’ exposure under the same circumstances to common air sufficed to fill these same infusions with life. Beyond this, however, I was able to show that the temperatures employed by me were exactly those which had previously been found most effectual by the writer who urged * Seo ‘Evolution, or the Origin of Life/ pp. 168, 169. + Evolution, u. 04 X Transactiona of tho Pathological Society, 1875, p. 272. V>/tLLCO i'..ilTUlE Coll. w;’'wlOmec Call 4- No. - t • 1 \ • ■
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3