The 'death-point' of bacteria is the maximum temperature at which they can live, or the minimum temperature at which they cease to live. If, for example, they survive a temperature of 140°, and do not survive a temperature of 150°, the death-point lies somewhere between these two temperatures. Vaccine lymph, for example, is proved by Messrs. Braidwood and Vacher to be deprived of its power of infection by brief exposure to a temperature between 140° and 150° Fahr. This may be regarded as the death-point of the lymph, or rather of the particles diffused in the lymph, which constitute the real contagium. If no time, however, be named for the application of the heat, the term 'death-point' is a vague one. An infusion, for example, which will resist five hours' continuous exposure to the boiling temperature, will succumb to five days' exposure to a temperature 50° Fahr. below that of boiling. The fully developed soft bacteria of putrefying liquids are not only killed by five minutes' boiling, but by less than a single minute's boiling — indeed, they are slain at about the same temperature as the vaccine. The same is true of the plastic, active bacteria of the turnip infusion [Footnote: In my paper in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1876, I pointed out and illustrated experimentally the difference, as regards rapidity of development, between water-germs and air-germs; the growth from the already softened water-germs proving to be practically as rapid as from developed bacteria. This preparedness of the germ for rapid development is associated with its preparedness for rapid destruction.]
But, instead of choosing a putrefying liquid for inoculation, let us prepare and employ our inoculating substance in the following simple way :—Let a small wisp of hay, desiccated by age, be washed in a glass of water, and let a perfectly sterilised turnip infusion be inoculated with the washing liquid. After three hours' continuous boiling the infusion thus infected will often develope luxuriant bacterial life. Precisely the same occurs if a turnip infusion be prepared in an atmosphere well charged with desiccated hay-germs. The infusion in this case infects itself without special inoculation, and its subsequent resistance to sterilisation is often very great. On the 1st of March last I purposely infected the air of our laboratory with the germinal dust of a sapless kind of hay mown in 1875. Ten groups of flasks were charged with turnip infusion prepared in the infected laboratory, and were afterwards subjected to the boiling temperature for periods varying from 15 minutes to 240 minutes. Out of the ten groups only one was sterilised — that, namely, which had been boiled for four hours. Every flask of the nine groups which had been boiled for 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, and 180 minutes respectively, bred organisms afterwards. The same is true of other vegetable infusions. On the 28th of February last, for example, I boiled six flasks, containing cucumber infusion prepared in an infected atmosphere, for periods of 15, 30, 45, 60, 120, and 180 minutes. Every flask of the group subsequently developed organisms. On the same day, in the case of three flasks, the boiling was prolonged to 240, 300, and 360 minutes; and these three flasks were completely sterilised. Animal infusions, which under ordinary circumstances are rendered infallibly barren by five minutes' boiling, behave like the vegetable infusions in an atmosphere infected with hay-germs. On the 30th of March, for example, five flasks were charged with a clear infusion of beef and boiled for 60 minutes, 120 minutes, 180 minutes, 240 minutes, and 300 minutes respectively. Every one of them became subsequently crowded with organisms, and the same happened to a perfectly pellucid mutton infusion prepared at the same time. The cases are to be numbered by hundreds in which similar powers of resistance were manifested by infusions of the most diverse kinds.
In the presence of such facts I would ask my colleague whether it is necessary to dwell for a single instant on the one-sidedness of the evidence which led the conclusion that all living matter has its life destroyed by 'the briefest exposure to the influence of boiling water.' An infusion proved to be barren by six months' exposure to moteless air maintained at a temperature of 90° Fahr., when inoculated with full-grown active bacteria, fills itself in two days with organisms so sensitive as to be killed by a few minutes' exposure to a temperature much below that of boiling water. But the extension of this result to the desiccated germinal matter of the air is without warrant or justification. This is obvious without going beyond the argument itself. But we have gone far beyond the argument, and proved by multiplied experiment the alleged destruction of all living matter by the briefest exposure to the influence of boiling water to be a defusion. The whole logical edifice raised upon this basis falls therefore to the ground; and the argument that bacteria and their germs, being destroyed at 140°, must, if they appear after exposure to 212°, be spontaneously generated, is, I trust, silenced for ever.
Through the precautions, variations, and repetitions observed and executed with the view of rendering its results secure, the separate vessels employed in this enquiry have mounted up in two years to nearly ten thousand.
Besides the philosophic interest attaching to the problem of life's origin, which will be always immense, there are the practical interests involved in the application of the doctrines here discussed to surgery and medicine. The antiseptic system, at which I have already glanced, illustrates the manner in which beneficent results of the gravest moment follow in the wake of clear theoretic insight. Surgery was once a noble art; it is now, as well, a noble science. Prior to the introduction of the antiseptic system, the thoughtful surgeon could not have failed to learn empirically that there was something in the air which often defeated the most consummate operative skill. That something the antiseptic treatment destroys or renders innocuous. At King's College Mr. Lister operates and dresses while a fine shower of mixed carbolic acid and water, produced in the simplest manner, falls upon the wound, the lint and gauze employed in the subsequent dressing being duly saturated with the antiseptic. At St. Bartholomew's Mr. Callender employs the dilute carbolic acid without the spray; but, as regards the real point aimed at — the preventing of the wound from becoming a nidus for the propagation of septic bacteria — the practice in both hospitals is the same. Commending itself as it does to the scientifically trained mind, the antiseptic system has struck deep root in Germany.
Had space allowed, it would have given me pleasure to point out the present position of the 'germ theory' in reference to the phenomena of infectious disease, distinguishing arguments based on analogy — which, however, are terribly strong — from those based on actual observation. I should have liked to follow up the account I have already given [Footnote: 'Fortnightly Review,' November 1876, see article 'Fermentation.'] of the truly excellent researches of a young and an unknown German physician named Koch, on splenic fever, by an account of what Pasteur has recently done with reference to the same subject. Here we have before us a living contagium of the most deadly power, which we can follow from the beginning to the end of its life cycle. [Footnote: Dallinger and Drysdale had previously shown what skill and patience can accomplish, by their admirable observations on the life history of the monads.] We find it in the blood or spleen of a smitten animal in the state say of short motionless rods. When these rods are placed in a nutritive liquid on the warm stage of the microscope, we soon see them lengthening into filaments which lie, in some cases, side by side, forming in others graceful loops, or becoming coiled into knots of a complexity not to be unravelled. We finally see those filaments resolving themselves into innumerable spores, each with death potentially housed within it, yet not to be distinguished microscopically from the harmless germs of Bacillus subtilis. The bacterium of splenic fever is called Bacillus Anthracis. This formidable organism was shown to me by M. Pasteur in Paris last July. His recent investigations regarding the part it plays pathologically certainly rank amongst the most remarkable labours of that remarkable man. Observer after observer had strayed and fallen in this land of pitfalls, a multitude of opposing conclusions and mutually destructive theories being the result. In association with a younger physiological colleague, M. Joubert, Pasteur struck in amidst the chaos, and soon reduced it to harmony. They proved, among other things, that in cases where previous observers in France had supposed themselves to be dealing solely with splenic fever, another equally virulent factor was simultaneously active. Splenic fever was often overmastered by septicaemia, and results due solely to the latter had been frequently made the ground of pathological inferences regarding the character and cause of the former. Combining duly the two factors, all the previous irregularities disappeared, every result obtained receiving the fullest explanation. On studying the account of this masterly investigation, the words wherewith Pasteur himself feelingly alludes to the difficulties and dangers of the experimenter's art came home to me with especial force: 'J'ai tant de fois éprouvé que dans cet art difficile de l'expérimentation les plus habiles bronchent à chaque pas, et que l'interprétation des faits nest pas moins périlleuse.' [Footnote: Comptes-Rendus,' lxxxiii. p. 177.]
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