MEMOIRS. 



The Doctrine of Contagium Vivum and its Application to 

 Medicine. By William Eoberts, M.D., F.R.S., Phy- 

 sician to the Manchester Royal Infirmary ; Professor of 

 Clinical Medicine in Owens College. 



[Address in Medicine, delivered at the meeting of the British Medical 

 Association at Manchester, August, 1877.] 



Gentlemen, — The notion that contagious diseases are 

 produced by minute organisms has prevailed in a vague way 

 from a remote age; but it is only within the last twenty 

 years — since the publication of Pasteur's researches on fer- 

 mentation and putrefaction — that it has assumed the posi- 

 tion of a serious pathological doctrine. In the last decade, 

 startling discoveries of organisms in the blood have given 

 this doctrine the support of actual observation; and its ap- 

 plication as a guide in the treatment of wounds by Professor 

 Lister has made it a subject of universal interest to medical 

 practitioners. 



The resemblance between a contagious fever and the 

 action of yeast in fermentation — or the action of bacteria in 

 decomposition — is in many points so striking that it is 

 difficult to avoid the impression that there is some real 

 analogy between them. If, for example, we compare the 

 action of yeast with smallpox, this resemblance comes out 

 very distinctly, as the following experiment will show. I 

 filled two pint bottles, a and b, with fresh saccharine urine, 

 and inserted a delicate thermometer in each, a was inocu- 

 lated with a minute quantity of yeast, but nothing was 

 added to b. Both bottles were then placed in a warm place 

 in my room, at a temperature of about 70 deg. Fahr. In 

 order to get a correct standard of temperature for com- 

 parison, I placed beside these a third bottle, c, filled with 

 water, and inserted a delicate thermometer in it. All these 

 bottles were carefully swathed in cotton-wadding, for the 



VOL. XVII. NEW SER. X 



