Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours

hus M. Villemin, the chief medical officer of the Val de Grace (who had with so much sagacity discovered the contagion of tuberculosis) when typhoid fever was raging in Paris two ye

days after her confinement. By means of a pin a prick was made in the forefinger of the left hand, which had been washed previously with dilute alcohol and carbolic acid, and dried with singed linen. The drop of blood taken in this way was sown in an infusion of fowl. For some days the cultivation remained sterile. Next day blood was taken from a fresh puncture, and this time it proved fertile. The woman died three days after. The blood, therefore, already at the time when Pas

silic and femoral veins was likewise sown. It was everywhere easy to recognise the long chaplets in little tangled parcels, and always without admixture of other organisms, except in th

ncture in the peritoneum he collected some pus which was found there in great abundance. He sowed this, as well as some blood taken from a vein in the arm. Th

or of the lymphatics, over different parts of the body. Here the various morbid symptoms are determined by the nature of the parasite and the general constitution of the patient. Pasteur is convinced that, with the possible exception of cases where, by the presence either of internal or external abscesses, the body, before confinement, contains microscopic organisms, the antiseptic treatment ought to be infallib

d and warm solution of boric acid, with compresses to be very frequently renewed, after having been soaked in the solution, these applications being begun immediately after the confinement? I

lf entirely from a pre-existing subjective bias; neither do I forget that the medical and veterinary studies are foreign to myself: therefore I earnestly desire judgment and criticism. While I am little tolerant of frivo

ployment of a solution of one to a thousandth of corrosive sublimate, which is one of the best antiseptics, gives excellent results, and keeps off all danger. May it not be