6 NKW IWESTIGATIONS OX RICKKTS AND MACROZAMIA. 



"discovered l)y Prof. Baumann of Freiburg, my native town, that 

 the active principle is nothing else but Iodine contained in tlie 

 serum of the gland combined with an albuminoid as Thyreoiodine, 

 easily accessible to the system by this combination. 



Besides the Schizomycetes another sway of organisms, 

 representing amoeboid bodies, and classed before Haeckel's times, 

 in the animal kingdom, intrude the human body causing disease. 

 Laveran, a French military surgeon in Algeria, discovered in 

 1880 the true cause of malarial fever in the shape of an amoe- 

 boid organism, very inadequately named " Plasmodium " (a term 

 already given by De Bary to the Myxomycetos). The most 

 different symptoms are produced by the intrusion of these amoe- 

 boids in the human body from simple intermittent neuralgies of 

 the forehead to the Perniciosas, which are apt to stop our earthly 

 career by one single attack of fever. 



The occurrence of Malaria is not restricted to swampy place.s. 

 or to low-lying marsh ground. The dry mountain plains of the 

 Andes are infested with INIalaria, and at my old home, the western 

 slopes of the Black Forest, with their highly cultivated ground 

 stretching away towards the banks of the Rhine, claim still 

 now human sacrificies by malarial Anaemia. 



The glorious knowledge of human diseases alluded to here 

 has been obtained only in the lapse of the last twenty years by 

 the combined efforts of all civilized nations, and by a tremendous, 

 amount of work done by the higher and lower order of investi- 

 gators. 



Still greater difficulties await the .scientist who undertakes- 

 the task of elucidating the nature of those dumb creatures, the 

 animals, which cannot tell us where and how they suffer, which 

 only can complain in a rude manner and which, if not under- 

 stood, can only lie down and die. Many diseases are common 

 to the animals and to the human beings. Tuberculosis pro- 

 pagated by Koch's Bacillus is one of these widely spread scourges 

 of the mammals. Influenza and Typhoid have a wide range 

 too. Ruminants are highly disposed to Anthrax or Splenic 

 fever, the bacillus of which disease is apt to intrude human 

 beings and to kill them. Hor.ses are specially subjected to the 

 "Glanders" or Malleus, transferable to human beings too.. 



