ZOOLOGY. 361 



ords of imposition and delusion, we shall find many a thing attested, 

 and for a time believed, of as marvellous a kind as the sudden whiten- 

 in <r of the human hair. 



o 



POSSIBLE ULTIMATE CAUSES OF DISEASE. BY M. C. LEA, 



ESQ. 



There are, perhaps, few branches of medical science which are sur- 

 rounded by so many difficulties, or in which so little has been accom- 

 plished, as the investigation of the ultimate causes of disease. The 

 subject offers a wide field for study, which would, no doubt, well re- 

 ward the time and labor which might be expended upon it. Raspail, 

 in spite of his eccentricities, made some curious and ingenious obser- 

 vations and suggestions, though he doubtless erred in looking too far 

 for his causes, and referring too much to remote and insufficient 

 agents, such as inhalation of sporules, seeds, etc., and ingestion of 

 particles acting hurtfully by mechanical agencies, and other similar 

 accidents. Those to which it is here proposed to refer are in their 

 nature obscure and difficult of recognition, but of sufficient gravity to 

 explain all the eifects which may be supposed to arise from them. 



It is possible that there may exist abnormal states of the system, 

 in consequence of which the digestion of certain aliments may take 

 place in an abnormal manner. It is not here intended to refer to 

 indigestion, which, in many cases, may even be a wholesome and ben- 

 eficial effort of nature to prevent the assimilation of a particular kind 

 of food which the actual condition of the body may render injurious, 

 but to an action of a very different character. Food which may, in 

 normal conditions of the body, yield products of digestion of the most 

 nutritious and wholesome character, might equally, in certain unfa- 

 vorable conditions of the digestive system, yield more or less active 

 poison, which, though generated in very small quantity, may gradu- 

 ally go on with a slowly increasing toxical effect, until the whole sys- 

 tem is disordered by it. Disordered digestive functions of this kind 

 may perhaps be the key to many of those inexplicable changes of 

 health, in which the system is gradually broken down without any 

 visible cause. 



One or two examples will be sufficient to illustrate the author's 

 meaning, it not being his intention to enter upon speculations be- 

 longing less to chemistry than to chemical physiology, but rather to 

 suggest how much invaluable information might be obtained by sub- 

 jecting parts of the body after death by disease to a rigid chemical 

 analysis, with a view to detect the presence of poisonous substances 

 generated in the body itself out of aliments innocuous in a normal con- 

 dition of the functions of digestion. 



Butyric Acid. This acid is an active poison. M. Isidore Pierre 

 mentions a case reported to the Agricultural Society of Caen, in which 

 a number of horses had suffered severely by drinking water out of a 

 certain pool, two of the number having died in consequence. The 

 analysis of the water of this pool, which was in the neighborhood of 

 a farm-yard, proved the existence of butyric acid in a saline form in 

 it ; and other similar cases were ascertained. No other substance 

 could be detected in the water which could have had a poisonous 

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