New theory and old practice in relation to medicine and certain industries : being an analysis of current literature of these subjects / by C.A. Gordon.

Gordon, Charles Alexander, 1821-1899.

Date:: 1886

Credit: New theory and old practice in relation to medicine and certain industries : being an analysis of current literature of these subjects / by C.A. Gordon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$accepted as true by the noble writer] in inconceivable quantities through the whole country. (Sent to Daily Telegraph, by Lord Shaftesbury, March 17, 1882, as a warning to the farmers in England). Dr. Klein criticised somewhat severely the views expressed, by M. Pasteur, in 1881, on the subject of anthrax and inoculation for that disease. He pointed out that the results of experiments performed by him mth the bacillus anthracis differed from those reported by M. Pasteur ; that after a time those bacilli midergo degeneration in liquid cultivations, and although capable of producing the disease in certain animals (guinea pigs and rabbits) they were incapable of infecting others (wliite mice). It was found that two separate and consecutive specimens of iVI. Pasteur's vaccin charhonneusa, obtained from his accredited agent, entirely failed to produce the results claimed for them. Sheep inoculated wiih the fresh blood of a mouse which had died of anthrax suffered only in that its temperature rose slightly {i.e. it became feverish); they were not h )wever in the least affected when subsequently inoculated with a virulent cultivation. Dr. Klein confirmed the statements of Gerlach and BoUinger that putrefaction destroyed the infective power of the blood, and organs of an animal dead of anthrax. He therefore concludes that M. Pasteur was mistaken in supposing that in animals dead of anthrax, and buried, the bacillus retained its infective power for years; and believes, on the contrary, that this power is quickly lost, owing to the complete degeneration of the bacillus. (See British Medical Journal.^ May 31, 1884, p. 1052). M. Pasteur found on examining earth worms, in places where carcases of animals, dead by anthrax had been buried, that ten or twelve years previous an extract of the contents of these alimentary canals, when inoculated into rabbits and guinea pigs, gave rise to the severest form of charbon in them, due to the multiplication in their circulating current of the deadly anthrax bacillus. {^Nineteenth Centuri/, October, 1881). Dr. Koch demonstrated by experiments (as shewn above) that Pasteur's theory as to earth worms being the agents in infection of autlirax, was pure romance from beginning to end. {Zoophilist, February, 188-3). On the same subject Professor Greenfield writes:— The blood and tissues of animals dying of anthrax usually swarm with iho bacillus anthracis. But it is not in every case of that'affoction that bacilli present this appearance of rods, or are found in such numbers. In some cases examined after death, the rods may bo much longer than$