The Microscopic Germ Theory of Disease. By H. C. Bastian. 71 
in small-pox, in measles, in scarlet fever, and other allied contagious 
diseases from which man and domestic animals suffer so severely. 
The material in question grows and multiplies and produces its 
kind, as all living things do, and as nothing that does not live has 
been proved to he capable of doing. We may therefore conclude 
that it is living matter.” And as to the derivation of such matter, 
Dr. Beale says, “ a disease germ is probably a particle of living 
matter derived by direct descent from the living matter of man’s 
organism,” though he supposes it to be altered and degraded as 
regards formative power by previous rapid multiplication of the 
tissue-elements or particles from which it has been derived. In 
many respects I am disposed to assent to this view, so long as it 
is not taken in too exclusive a sense. I will now, however, only 
mention what I consider to be its weakness. It seems to me that 
proof is wholly wanting as regards the statement which I have had 
printed in italics. That there is an enormous increase of germinal 
particles in the blood and in many of the tissues in these specific 
contagious diseases, Dr. Beale has helped to show us by his valuable 
researches upon the pathology of the cattle plague and other allied 
affections ; but that such germinal or living particles are in any 
direct sense the descendants of the particles which acted as con- 
tagia, or, in fact, that the contagious particles really multiply to 
any extent in the body ; these are propositions which at present 
appear to me to he wholly devoid of all proof. I and other patho- 
logists are free to hold that contagious particles, whether composed 
of living or of not-living organic materials, may initiate changes in 
the tissues and fluids with which they come into contact, which 
changes may be exaggerated as they spread, so as at last to 
implicate the blood. And as one result of this altered constitution 
of the nutritive fluid and of the general febrile condition simul- 
taneously excited, we may get that undue proliferation of tissue- 
elements and multiplication of their products which appear to go 
on in the blood and in the various tissues of persons suffering from 
these febrile diseases. Beyond these surmises we seem also to have 
to do with mere conjecture rather than with established facts. 
Leaving this aspect of the question, therefore, I now turn to 
the special subject of this debate, viz. the truth of the germ theory 
as it is ordinarily understood, or the relation of the lower organisms 
to virulent inflammations and then’ sequel® on the one hand, and 
to specific contagious fevers on the other. 
Applicability of the germ theory to virulent inflammations and 
their sequelae ( gonorrhoea , pundent ophthalmia, erysipelas, 
hospital gangrene, puerperal fever, pyaemia, septicaemia, fc.) 
A few years ago no one would have thought of connecting the 
contagiousness of gonorrhoea or of purulent ophthalmia with the 
presence of bacteria. The respective secretions were known to 
