Germless Life

Is life without germs possible? Pasteur thought not; he held that animals and other vertebrates need intestinal bacteria. But last week the New York Zoological Society reported experiments that seemed to prove Pasteur wrong. Zoologists had succeeded in keeping fish, chickens, guinea pigs and monkeys alive under completely germless conditions.

Most successful were Drs. James A. Baker and Malcolm S. Ferguson of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Princeton, who raised a group of "axenic" Mexican platyfish (Platypoecttus maculatus) from birth to full maturity.* The platyfish, not an egg-layer, bears live young. To make sure that their baby platyfish got a germ-free start, the researchers bathed the mother fish in alcohol, ether and iodine, made a Caesarean incision and gently sucked the young out of the germless oviduct with a rubber bulb, taking care not to rupture the germ-packed intestines. Then they popped the baby fishes into warm, sterile water, later transferred them to sterile, stoppered milk bottles.

There most of them lived to the ripe age of more than four months. They were fed varying diets of sterilized fish food, algae, housefly larvae and axenic worms. They grew best on the worms. When a platyfish died (apparently because of inadequate diet), it remained clear-eyed and fresh; there were no bacteria present to decompose it. At the end of the experiment nearly all the fish were found still free of microorganisms.

*The word axenic, from the Greek a ("free from") and xenos ("stranger"), was coined for the occasion by Princeton Classics Professor Allan C. Johnson.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.