BIOLOGY. 301 



onr popnlation, and tlie latter many thousands more. The mere 

 quantity of this wastt^d life is soniethin_^ lion-ible to conteiuplate, 

 and the mode in wliicii the waste is caused is nothing less than 

 shami'ful. It is to be hoj)ed that, as the education of the country 

 advances, this thintj will come to an end ; that so much preventi- 

 ble death will not always be accepted as a fate ; that for a popula- 

 tion to be thus poisoned by its own excrement will some da}* be 

 deemed ignominious and intolerable." 



FUNGOID ORIGIN OF DISEASES. 



Modern investigation points to the cryptogamic origin of many 

 diseases, such as cholera, typhus, malarious fevers of hot climates, 

 dj'senter}', yellow fever; and further research may show that tlie 

 so-called exanthemata have a like origin. 



The late epidemic of pestilential intermittent fever at the ]\Iau- 

 ritius, one of the most fatal known, has been evidently connected 

 at the outset with malarious influences, while its spread was ag- 

 gravated by contagion, by contaminated drinking-water, and by 

 exposure to the emanations from the discharges of infected per- 

 sons. Such is also the history of yellow fever in its rise and prog- 

 ress, in whatever country it occurs ; of epidemic dysentery in its 

 home in India; and of cholera. Each is dependent upon its own 

 peculiar fungus for the train of symptoms which ensue ; and this 

 again belongs to that genus or species which the animal and vege- 

 table life of the country where it grows tends to produce. 



The investigations of Dr. Schmidt have proved the presence in 

 the Mauritius fever, along the whole intestinal canal, of minute 

 plants of a fungus, the countertypes of similar growth found un- 

 der the microscope in the water of tlie Grand River. Rank vege- 

 tation, stagnant waters, a polluted atmosphere, or one damp and 

 reeking with the products of decaying animal and vegetable mat- 

 ter, contaminated water, with heaps of human ordure lying near 

 it, are more or less characteristic of the outbreak and spread of 

 3'ellow fever, cholera, tropical intermittents, and dysentery. We 

 must bear in mind that streams, sewers, drains, and cesspools of 

 towns, which hold in suspense the germs of many a poison may, 

 and doubtless do, contain other ingredients which destroy the 

 vitality of the germs, and thus limit their spread. Myriads of 

 them are rendereAl innocuous, or their organization destroyed, 

 and new combinations formed out of their elements, by the action 

 of the other ingredients suspended in the same medium. 



There is reason to believe that the cholera-breeding fungus is 

 never so abundant as that of most vegetable fungi ; the rarity of 

 its appearance, its comparatively limited spread, audits disappear- 

 ance after a time, are no arguments against its existence, but only 

 show its delicate organization, its easy destruction, and the rarity 

 of the combination of conditions necessary to produce it. It may 

 be that some diseases take their rise in the entrance of the spores 

 of certain species of infusoria, and others in that of the germs of 

 certain genera of fungi. The cells of either, whilst floating in 

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