De Zouche. — Bacteria and their Belation to Disease. 31 



maidens at work. At the same time the broad acres being 

 ploughed in the compartment of the shield next to that depict- 

 ing him and his re/ievo? are not his. That he ultimately 

 swallows the acres, ploughmen, and all, is matter of common 

 historical knowledge. But in the Iliad his re'/xcvos is a little 

 patch which his subjects or his peers grant him out of the 

 common stock. 



For him, and his descendants according to the spirit, 

 ancient language finds it hard to coin a suitable name. Where 

 is the word which to the Italian, or to the Greek, comes quite 

 so glibly as to the Englishman his much-used word " land- 

 lord " ? It is not domimis, nor possessor, nor herus, nor 



^eo-TTorrjs, nor K\r]pov)(()<;, nor ^acri\€v<;. 



Art. III. — Bacteria and their Relation to Disease. 



By Isaiah de Zouche, M.D., Address as President of the 



Otago Institute. 

 [Read before the Otago Institute, 12th November, 1889.] 

 It will help us to better understand the widespread revolution 

 in pathological views or doctrines occasioned by the discovery 

 of bacterial agency in disease if we glance at some of the 

 theories which were formerly held regarding the nature of 

 disease — theories which still lurk in the belief of certain classes 

 of the people, just as old styles in dress and old-fashioned 

 modes of speech are found amongst them long after they have 

 become obsolete in the centres of fashion and learning. 



At an early period in the history of medicine disease was 

 attributed to alterations of the humours of the body. Hippo- 

 crates, born about 450 years before Christ, who has been 

 justly styled " the father of medicine," described certain 

 humours known later as the "cardinal humours," to the de- 

 rangements of which he attributed various diseases. The 

 humours, according to Hippocrates, were four — namely, 

 blood, phlegm or mucus, yellow bile, and black bile. He held 

 that in order that the body should be maintained in health 

 these humours should be mixed in just proportion as regards 

 quantity and force, but especially that they should be well 

 inixed ; that disease results from excess or defect of any of 

 these humours, or from its separation without having been 

 duly mixed with the others. Thus, our word " melancholy," 

 meaning in Greek black bile, denotes an affection in which 

 black bile is supposed to be in excess; a "phlegmatic" tem- 

 perament characterizes those in whom the cold or phlegmatic 

 watery humour is overabundant ; while the word " dyscra- 

 sia," meaning a faulty admixture (of the humours), is still used 



