58 



DE, R. ANGUS SMITH ON ANCIENT AND 



gaol, and numbers of those that attended the business, sickened 

 upon it and died. Out of question such smells consist of 

 man's flesh or sweat putrefied. There may be great danger of 

 such compositions in great meetings of people within houses, 

 for poisoning of air is no less dangerous than poisoning of 

 water. And these empoisonments of air are more dangerous 

 in meetings of people, because the much breath of people 

 doth further the reception of the ferment." 



Becher also was thinking the same thing, with others in 

 other parts of the world, and, after a long and rather imagina- 

 tive passage, he says, in his " Physicce Subterranea" Lib. i., 

 sect. 5, cap. 1, n. 17, published in 1669: — 



"Secundo, ejusmodi particulae vario quoque modo alterantur, 

 per putridas eraanationes corporum sive vivorum sive mortuo- 

 rum, hinc multi morbi contagiosi, refertque Pancirollus in 

 ohservationihus vespillonem ex apertura cujusdam sepulchri, 

 mortuum esse, presertim cum cadavera insepulta jacent, nihil 

 enim magis inficit, qudm cum aer iisdem inquinatur." 



This asserts the danger of the putrid emanations of bodies, 

 whether living or dead. 



Closely connected with this is the theory of putrefaction and 

 fermentation, both of ancient and of modern times, leading to 

 the term Zymotic, for a class of diseases having the power of 

 propagating themselves. 



Fermentation in putrid bodies had, in fact, been much 

 spoken of, as a cause of disease, until men were weary of the 

 indefinite word. According to Kopp's '^History of Chemistry" 

 Willis, in 1659, first explained what fermentation meant, and 

 referred numerous, "if not all diseases to it. He said that 

 *' Fermentation was an intestine motion of any body, either 

 tending to perfection or change." Stahl says, in Shaw's 

 edition, 1730, — "Now 'tis manifest both to sense and reason 

 that a body, actually in motion, coming to impinge against 

 another which is moveable, though not yet actually moved, 

 will communicate thereto so much of its motion as the pro- 

 portion of the other's magnitude will allow it to receive." 



