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Davaine did, indeed, perform some experiments in inoculation that were successful, but his results were contradicted by the experiments of Messrs. Jaillard and Leplat, and those of Mr. Bert concerning the toxic influence of oxygen at high tension upon microbes. As Davaine was unable to explain the contradiction between his results and those of Messrs.

Davaine has shown that iodine is a strong bactericide. He experimented with anthrax bacilli in water to which iodine was added, and the bacilli were destroyed. But practically the organisms have to be dealt with in the alkaline contents of the bowel, or in the blood or fluids of the tissues, where iodine cannot remain in the free state.

The presumption exists, nevertheless, that when the same form of bacteria is present in the same tissue with the same affection, it is connected with the disease. This was what Davaine was the first to show with regard to Bacillus anthracis, which causes charbon.

The parasitic nature of charbon was therefore absolutely demonstrated, first, by the constant presence of Bacillus anthracis in the blood of anthracoid animals, and second, by the pure culture of the parasite and the inoculation of animals with charbon by means of it. Davaine began the demonstration in 1863, and Pasteur finished it in 1877.

A French physician, Dr. Davaine, was fortunate in making the first application of these principles to Medicine, in 1863. Our researches of last year, left the etiology of the putrid disease, or septicemia, in a much less advanced condition than that of anthrax.

Years before, those organisms had been seen by Pollender and Davaine, but the epoch-making advance of Koch was to grow those organisms in a pure culture outside the body, and to produce the disease artificially by inoculating animals with the cultures Koch is really our medical Galileo, who, by means of a new technique, pure cultures and isolated staining, introduced us to a new world.