From the Maternity Hospital Pasteur went to the Hôpital Lariboisière, where he had been informed that another woman had just died of the same fever. From a puncture 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. The culture of the pus furnished the long strings of grains and the little pyogenic vibrio. The culture of the blood exhibited only the long strings quite pure. Pasteur made many other observations of the same kind in cases of puerperal fever. He arrived at the conclusion that, under the name of puerperal fever, diseases of different symptoms were classed, but which all appear to be the result of the invasion of common organisms, which develop themselves on the surface of wounded parts, and from thence spread themselves, in one form or another, by the medium of the blood 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 infallible in preventing puerperal fever from declaring itself. The employment of carbolic acid may be of great service; but its smell, and often the melancholy association of ideas which it awakens, might render it unsuitable for women in labour. There is not the same objection to concentrated solutions of boric acid, which, at the ordinary temperature, contain from thirty to forty grammes of acid to one litre of water. 'Would it not be very useful,' said Pasteur one day, when developing his ideas and observations before the Academy of Sciences, 'to place always by the bedside of each patient the concentrated 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? It would also be prudent, before using the compresses, to put them into a hot-air stove, at a temperature of 150 degrees, which is more than sufficient to kill all the germs of common organisms. 'I have,' he added, 'represented the facts as they have appeared to me, and I have hazarded the interpretation of them; but I do not disguise from myself that, in the domain of medicine, it is difficult to withdraw oneself 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 frivolous contradiction or of prejudice, despising as I do that vulgar scepticism which would erect doubt into a system, I honour that militant scepticism which makes doubt the basis of a method, whose motto is "More light."'