l66 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



often to the pulmonary mucous surface, and that his 

 expectoration was, after returning, uniformly filled 

 with the minute oblong cells above described. Other 

 medical men, who accompanied him on subsequent 

 occasions, experienced the same results. " Numerous 

 other persons," he says, " who visited with me ague 

 grounds, were invariably affected with the same train 

 of symptoms." The only constant bodies found in 

 the expectoration of those aftected with the above 

 local symptoms produced by walking over ague 

 grounds, and in the expectoration of those immersed 

 in the night emanations of malarial levels, were the 

 minute palmelloid cells previously described. The 

 source of these cells was found to be the palmelloid 

 plants growing in such profusion on the drying soil of 

 ague lands during the prevalence of intermittents. It is 

 thence inferred that the minute cell emanations from 

 these low vegetable organisms are capable of exciting 

 local fever in the mucous surfaces with which they 

 come in immediate contact ; and, further, that there is 

 strong presumptive evidence, from what has been 

 previously determined, that, by repeated and continued 

 exposure to them they may cause general fever, of 

 either an intermittent or remittent type. This was 

 Dr. Salisbury's contention ; and then he adduces cases 

 in proof, one of which may be cited, although adduced 

 subsequently. He says, " After exhibiting, about the 

 1st of November, a large pan of soil covered with 

 this vegetation to the class in one of my lectures, I 

 placed it under the working-table in Dr. House's 

 office. It was loosely covered with a newspaper and 

 forgotten. In a few days the doctor began to have 



