4 PRKSIDKNTIAL ADDRKSS BY 



Not only have we poisons produced by the growth of these micro-organisms, but we 

 also have poisonous alkaloids produced by tlie growth of animals themselves ; thus we have 

 the whole series of Ftomains or cadaveric alkaloids and Leucomains or alkaloids developed 

 during life in the living body. " In 1822 Gaspard and Stick had detected a venomous 

 principle in cadaverous extracts." " Panum in 1856 found that putrid matter contained a 

 poison of great activity." 



Taking the yeast plant, Saccharomyces cerevisice, as a sample, it grows freely between 

 the temperatures of 70 ' and 80" Fah., in a solution of sugar; by its growth it produces 

 carbonic acid gas and converts the sugar into alcohol ; if there be too much sugar, such an 

 amount of alcohol is formed that the yeast plant is killed and there remains in the alcoholic 

 solution. If this alcoholic solution be left to itself, the spores of another fungus are 

 deposited and if the temperature be adapted to its growth the fungus Mycoderma aceii is 

 developed, when the alcohol is converted into acetic acid. 



The growth of these two plants, the yeast and the vinegar plant, have each destroj-ed the 

 material upon which they lived and have converted it into a poison to themselves, but have 

 prepared it for the development of its successor, and this is found to be the case with all 

 these fungal growths. Each has its life and death, having yielded to another, that has a 

 constitution enabling it to thrive in the nuiterials resulting from the growth of its prede- 

 cessor. 



And all putrefaction is now known to lie the result not of the death of the animal or 

 vegetable, but of the teeming life which preys on dead organic matter. 



That scourge of the human family, tuberculosis or consumption, which only a few 

 years ago was considered as hereditary and was said not to be infectious, is now found to be 

 the result of the growth of one of these fungoid micro-organisms — the l^acillus of tuljercle, 

 and that it is highly infectious, not only among man, but also among other animals and is 

 communicable from one to the other. 



That awful disease tetanus or lock-jaw, until lately supposed to be a nervous disease, 

 has also been discovered to be due to the growth of another bacillus found in the soil and 

 that death is produced, not by the growth of the fungus but by the substance formed during 

 its life, called tetanin, and which can be prepared liy artiticially cultivating the bacillus, and 

 which artilicially prepared tetanin when introduced into the blood of animals produces the 

 same symptoms as the disease. 



These discoveries are due to the united aid of the mathematician, the physicist and the 

 chemist. The physicist in ascertaining the refractive index of the glasses of which the 

 lenses are made, the mathematician for calculating the curvatures of those lenses which 

 have brought these minute organisms within the sight of man, the chemist who has 

 examined the products of the life of these organisms and who has nmnufactured the dyes 

 with which these little bodies are stained, so as to make them visible — in fact, these very 

 stains, dyeing one substance and not another as they do, are among the means by which 

 these minute ol))ects are ditterentiatt'd from one another under the microscope. 



The discovery of the cause of these diseases being made, workers at once set about the 

 prol)lem, how they produced their results, how nature eiudjled the individual attacked to 

 protect itself and resist the invader, and lu)W to find a remedy for the disease. On these 

 points work is now going on. First, nature does her Itest, and the moment one of these 

 intruders gets a foothold in the breach which has been made, immediately sets about eject- 



