Page 143 - Ethel D. Hume - Bešam ili Paster: Izgubljeno poglavlje u istoriji biologije

140 BfiCHAMP OR PASTEUR?
to follow his restricted ideas of micro-organisms, and,
during the sixties, one of them, M. Davaine, more or less
inaugurated what is now known as the germ-theory of
disease.
It came about in this way. A complaint called charbon or
splenic fever, and, later, more commonly known as
anthrax, made occasional ravages among the herds of
cattle and flocks of sheep in France and other parts of
Europe. In 1838, a Frenchman named Delafond drew
attention to appearances like little rods in the blood of
affected animals, and these were afterwards recognised
by Davaine and others. A theory had already been put for-
ward in the past by Kircher, Linne, Raspail and others
that special organisms might induce disease, and Davaine,
becoming acquainted with Pasteur's idea that each kind of
fermentation is produced by a specific germ of the air,
now suggested that the little rod-like organisms, which he
called bacteridia, might be parasitic invaders of animal
bodies and the cause of splenic fever, otherwise anthrax.
He and others, who tried to investigate the subject, met
with contradictory results in their experiments. It was
later, in 1878, that the German doctor, Robert Koch,
came to their rescue by cultivating the bacteridia and dis-
covering a formation of spores among them; while Pasteur
finally took the matter up and with his fondness for dog-
—
matising declared 1 : "Anthrax is, therefore, the disease of
the bacteridium, as trichinosis is the disease of the
trichina, as itch is the disease of its special acarus."
Generalisations are always dangerous in a world of con-
tradictions; but as it has been truly said, "there is no
doctrine so false that it does not contain some particle of
truth." This wise saying has been quoted by Bechamp, 2
—
who goes on: "It is thus with microbian doctrines.
Indeed, if in the eyes of a certain number of savants,
doctors and surgeons, the system of pre-existing morbid
germs were denuded of every appearance of truth and did

1
The Life of Pasteur, by Ren£ Vallery-Radot, p. 260.
2
La Thiorie du Microzyma, p. 37.