The bacteria / by Antoine Magnin, translated by George M. Sternberg.

  • Magnin, Antoine.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The bacteria / by Antoine Magnin, translated by George M. Sternberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    In France, Toussaint commenced, March 21, ]875, a series of successful inoculations upon rab- bits, with blood obtained from the spleen and an abdominal tumor of a sheep which had died of the mal du rate. These specimens had been sent to Chauveau by Joly, veterinary surgeon at Gien. Having preserved some blood in the air, Tous- saint remarked, as Davaine had done and as Koch had observed, that putrefaction kills the Bacillus; enclosed in a close vessel, it succumbs as soon as oxygen is wanting, which occurs sooner when the temperature is elevated. It was upon the presentation of these results to the Academy of Sciences that Cohn expressed the opinion that charbon is not due to a bacterium, but to a special virus. If the filtered blood does not act, it is because the filter, at the same time, retains the virus. Pasteur, in his letter of Aug. 18, 1877, replies that a virus would be impotent to resist the numer- ous cultivations endured by the liquids in his ex- periments, and that the bacteria alone remaining, it was very logical to attribute to them the infec- tious power possessed by the liquid of the last cultivation. Paul Bert had at first believed, with Cohn, in the existence of a virulent agent other than the bacteria. Indeed, after having treated blood of charbon with compressed air and alcohol, which kill bacteria, he had been able to transmit charbon. But, abandoning this first idea, he expressed him- self as of the same opinion as Pasteur and Joubert