Louis Pasteur: His Life and LaboursVallery-Radot, René
Science
Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours
Vallery-Radot, René
Pasteur, Louis, 1822-1895; Scientists -- France -- Biography
But if it was possible to render a fowl assailable by splenic fever
simply by lowering its temperature, is it not also possible to restore
to health a fowl so inoculated by warming it up again? A hen was
inoculated, subjected, like the first, to the cold-water treatment, and
when it became evident that the fever was at its height it was taken
out of the water, wrapped carefully in cotton wool, and placed in an
oven at a temperature of 35 degrees. Little by little its strength
returned; it shook itself, settled itself again, and in a few hours
was fully restored to health. The microbe had disappeared. Hens killed
after having been thus saved, no longer showed the slightest trace of
splenic organisms.
How great is the light which these facts throw upon the phenomenon
of life in its relation to external physical conditions, and what
important inferences do they warrant as to the influence of external
media and conditions upon the life and development of living contagia!
There have been great discussions in Germany and France upon a mode
of treatment in typhoid fever, which consists in cooling the body of
the patient by frequently repeated baths. The possible good effects of
this treatment may be understood when viewed in conjunction with the
foregoing experiment on fowls. In typhoid fever the cold arrests the
fermentation, which may be regarded as at once the expression and the
cause of the disease, just as, by an inverse process, the heat of the
body arrests the development of the splenic fever microbe in the hen.
_FOWL CHOLERA._
If fowls are naturally impervious to the infection of splenic
fever, there is a disastrous malady to which they are subject, and
which is commonly called 'fowl cholera.' Pasteur thus describes the
disorder:--'The bird which is attacked by this disease is without
strength, staggering, the wings drooping. The ruffled feathers of the
body give it the shape of a ball. An overpowering somnolence takes
possession of it. If forced to open its eyes, it appears as if it were
awakened out of a deep sleep. Very soon the eyelids close again, and
generally death comes without the animal changing its place, or without
any struggle, except at times a slight movement of the wings for a few
seconds.' The examination after death reveals considerable internal
disorders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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