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bioplasm or living germinal matter of the body which was 

 once healthy. And these have descended from the original 

 embryonic bioplasm mass. The death-producing disease 

 germ, therefore, is not derived from the vegetable kingdom, 

 and is not a parasite, but seems to have been derived from 

 the living or germinal matter of man's own organism. 



The evidence seems to prove that from normal white blood- 

 corpuscles may be evolved after very rapid growth and mul- 

 tiplication, bioplasts or living particles, which possess the 

 most virulent poisonous properties, destroying not only the 

 organism which gave them birth, but able to kill any other 

 organism into which they may be introduced. The higher 

 formative life of the white blood-corpuscle is degraded, and 

 its character for ever lost. But while this degradation has 

 been going on, new powers of life have somehow been ac- 

 quired. We cannot say there has been any loss of mere 

 vitality, of appropriating pabulum, of growing and multiply- 

 ing, for the new particles live faster than those from which 

 they emanated, but there has been loss of constructive, loss 

 of formative, power. Living matter derived from the blood, 

 which performs a very active part in healthy changes in the 

 organism, and without which healthy life cannot be sus- 

 tained, escapes from the blood, grows and lives under new 

 conditions, and from this results a living matter with properties 

 or powers so very different that if it returns to the blood 

 it may, by its increased rate of growth and multiplication, 

 appropriate the nutriment destined for the healthy textures, 

 and destroy the organism. It is a poison generated by the 

 degradation of healthy living matter. From bioplasm which 

 left the blood a formative constructive living substance, has 

 been developed, a living matter so deleterious that if it re- 

 enters the same blood, or that of another being, terrible 

 derangement and irreparable injury are occasioned, if indeed 

 death does not occur. 



And there is reason to think that the generation of the 

 poison of many contagious diseases, and all contagious 

 fevers, occurs in the same way. It is certain that many 

 cases of blood-poisoning, and various forms of idiopathic 

 fever, depend upon the passage into the blood, and its dis- 

 semination through the system, of a poisonous bioplasm 

 which has been generated in the body, the virulent bioplasm 

 itself having resulted from the growth and multiplication of 

 generations of particles deiived by continuous succession 

 from the normal bioplasm of the organism. These views have 

 been further developed in the second part of my work on 

 " Disease Germs," which will, I hope, be completed in the 

 course of the present summer. 



