cviii GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



teeth is largely due, not merely to the acids of the mouth, 

 but to a vegetable parasite, Leptothrix buccalis. Besides this, 

 there are other vegetable and even animal growths; these 

 are not much affected, except as to their abundance, by the 

 ordinary means employed to clean the teeth, but soapy wa- 

 ter appears to destroy them. The fungus attains its great- 

 est size in the interstices of the teeth, and after the action 

 of acids, taken with the food or in medicines, or such as 

 are formed in the mouth itself by some abnormality in the 

 secretions, which make the teeth more or less porous or soft, 

 the fungi penetrate the canaliculi both of the enamel and of 

 the dentine, and by their proliferation produce rapid soften- 

 ing and destructive effects. 



Dr. Lester Curtis states that Conheim's conclusion that 

 the pus corpuscle and the white blood corpuscle are iden- 

 tical, even with the saving epithet morphologically, is in- 

 consistent with well-known facts. It is due partly to the 

 acceptation of this theory that the name " leucolyte" has 

 arisen a term applied indiscriminately to the white blood 

 corpuscle, the lymph corpuscle, the wandering cell, and the 

 pus corpuscle. He attempts to prove 1st. That white blood 

 corpuscles, being in a transition stage, we have no right to 

 expect that in the changed condition of nutrition to which 

 they are subjected outside the vessels they would continue 

 to be the same that they were within the vessels. 2d. That 

 mere similarity of appearance was not sufficient evidence of 

 identity. 3d. That different samples of pus are unlike each 

 other; which they would not be if they were white blood 

 corpuscles. 4th. That pus differs from white blood corpus- 

 cles (a) in the disturbance it sets up when introduced in 

 these vessels ; (b) in the loss of power of organizing ; (c) in 

 the frequent acquisition of contagious properties. 



We find in the Medical Record, July, 1874, an account of 

 two cases of the fatal malady called malignant pustule, and 

 known, when occurring in cattle, as " the blood," and to 

 which the French give the name Charbon, and the Germans 

 that of Milzbrand. A microscopic examination showed in 

 the blood, and in the greenish-yellow spots, and in the pa- 

 renchyma of the gastric walls, enormous quantities of bac- 

 teria ; the disease was communicated from the first patient 

 to the post-mortem assistant of the hospital, and both cases 



