Louis Pasteur : his life and labours / by his son-in-law ; tr. from the French by Lady Claud Hamilton ; with an introduction by John Tyndall.

  • Vallery-Radot, René, 1853-1933.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Louis Pasteur : his life and labours / by his son-in-law ; tr. from the French by Lady Claud Hamilton ; with an introduction by John Tyndall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    depths where they he buried, the terrible microbes. In the tiny cyhnders of earth which the worms deposit on the surface of the soil, after the dews of the morning or after rain, the splenic germs are to be found. It is easy to prove this dhectly. If in earth, with which spores of the microbe have been previously mingled, we place some worms, and at the end of several days open the bodies of these worms, with all necessary precautions, so as to extract from them the earthy matter which fills their intestinal canals, we find in them large numbers of splenic fever spores. It is, then, absolutely proved, that if splenic fever germs exist, as they often do, in the hght earth which covers the pits in which animals dead of that disease lie buried, these germs result from the disintegration by rain of the little excremental cylinders deposited by the earth worms. The dust of this disintegrated earth spreads itself over the grasses on a level with the sod, and thus it is that animals come to find on the pasture-field, and in particular kinds of forage, the germs of splenic fever by which they are infected. * In these results,' said Pasteur a short time ago at the Academy of Medicine, * what outlooks are opened to the mind in regard to the possible influence of earths in the etiology of diseases, and the possible danger of the earth of cemeteries !' The earth-worms also bring to the surface other germs, which, while they are as harmless to the