310 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



great medical dictionaries now in course of pub- 

 lication. The second section of the " Dietion- 

 naire Encyclopedique" contains a long and elab- 

 orate historical article on " Magnetisme Animal," 

 from the pen of M. Dechambre, who has the 

 reputation of being one of the ablest of French 

 medical critics. After bringing down his history 

 to 1840, M. Dechambre thus continues : " Ici 

 pourrait se terminer l'histoire analytique du ma- 

 gnetisme animal ; car il ne se produira plus de- 

 sormais, en France du moins, que des faits isoles, 

 depourvus de toute authenticite, et le plus sou- 

 vent pour les besoins d'une miserable industrie." 

 Further on, he says : " Quant a toutes les pro- 

 prietes et facultes extraordinaires dont on a dote 

 les somnambules, et qu'il est inutile de rappeler, 

 nous attendons sans impatience ni preoccupation 

 qu'on en demontre mieux l'existence ; et nous 

 les considerons, jusqu'a nouvel ordre, comme un 

 double produit de l'illusion et de la supercherie." 

 And he sums up as follows : " Comme ceux des 

 effets que nous regardons comme possibles resul- 

 tent d'une autre cause que l'influence d'un agent 

 special dit magnetisme, nous terminons par cette 

 conclusion radicale : le magnetisme animal n'existe 

 pas." 



In this condemnation M. Dechambre does not 

 hesitate to include the Odylism of Von Reichen- 

 bach, which Mr. Wallace (in his review of my 

 " Lectures ") blames me for repudiating — the 

 reality of Eeichenbach's experimental results 

 having been attested by about sixty persons of 

 repute in Vienna, including " a number of litera- 

 ry, official, and scientific men and their fami- 

 lies ; " and having been verified in this country 

 by Prof. Gregory, of Edinburgh, and by Dr. 

 Ashburner in London. Now, it so happened that 

 I was assured at the time by the late Prof. Dau- 

 beny, of Oxford, who himself witnessed Von 



Eeichenbach's experiments at Vienna, that noth- 

 ing could be more loose and unscientific than the 

 manner in which they were conducted ; and the 

 verdict of that very clear-sighted and trustwor- 

 thy observer has been subsequently confirmed 

 by the general consensus of the scientific and 

 medical public of Germany, which, as I have 

 been recently assured by my distinguished friend 

 Prof. Hofmann, of Berlin, would treat any at- 

 tempt to rehabilitate Odyle (as it appears from 

 M. Dechambre's testimony that it would be treat- 

 ed by the scientific and medical public of France) 

 as simply non avenu. And any one who is ac- 

 quainted with the state of scientific and medical 

 opinion in this country must be well aware that 

 any attempt to rehabilitate Odyle, except on the 

 basis of a new set of experiments, in which the 

 old sources of fallacy should be carefully guarded 

 against, would be utterly futile ; neither the au- 

 thority of Prof. Gregory in Edinburgh, nor that 

 of Dr. Ashburner in London, having been con- 

 sidered by the scientific and medical contempora- 

 ries among whom they respectively lived, and to 

 whom their qualifications for such an inquiry 

 were well known, as of more account than that 

 of Von Reichenbach himself. 



I do not for a moment call in question the 

 right of any one either to hold or to express his 

 belief in clairvoyance and Odylism. But I do 

 protest against the right of such a one either to 

 call in question the candor and honesty of any 

 other who entertains an opinion as to the proba- 

 tive value of the evidence on these subjects that 

 differs from his own ; or to charge him with per- 

 verting the facts of history because his conclu- 

 sions as to the untrustworthiness of that evidence 

 are drawn from a survey of the whole of the his- 

 tory, and not from selected parts of it. — Athe- 

 naeum. 



THE GEEM-THEORY OF DISEASE. 



Br II. CHARLTON BASTIAN, F. R. S., M. D. 



T 



* HOUGH it may be conceded that with our 

 present state of knowledge an affirmative 

 decision in regard to the absolute proof of the 

 present occurrence of archebiosis (spontaneous 

 generation) may be still withheld, there is, I 

 think, no similar warrant for suspense of judg- 

 ment in regard to the Germ-Theory of Disease, 

 or, as it is also called, the doctrine of Contagium 



Vivum. Existing evidence seems to me abun- 

 dantly sufficient for the rejection of this doctrine 

 as untrue. 1 



1 Since this paper was read, the doctrine has again 

 been proclaimed — and never with more force and abil- 

 ity—by Dr. William Roberts {British Medical Jovrnal, 

 August 11, 1877). Its essential points may be stated 

 in the words of its latest exponent. He says: "I 



