The Microscopic Germ Theory of Disease. By E. C. Bastian. 129 
9. I have got my most abundant materials from the tuber when 
soft and almost transparent, like painter’s size ; in this state the 
starch is utterly destroyed, and, what is most curious, there is no 
offensive smell. The tuber frequently decomposes with a horrible 
foetor, and turns whitish inside ; the starch is then present and 
more or less injured, and very little can be seen of the fungus. 
10. The season is too far advanced, and the fungus has already 
caused too much destruction, to think of grappling with it this 
season, but when it is remembered how the Vine, the Corn, and 
Hollyhock parasites have been restrained, it certainly does not seem 
impossible that means may be found to mitigate the damage done 
every year by the Potato murrain. 
IV. — The Microscopic Germ Theory of Disease ; being a Discus- 
sion of the Relation of Bacteria and Allied Organisms to 
Virulent Inflammations and Specific Contagious Fevers. By 
H. Charlton Bastian, M.D., F.B.S., Professor of Patho- 
logical Anatomy in University College. 
(Continued from p . 79.) 
Turning from these statements, therefore, as to the assumed 
modes by which bacteria habitually gain an entry into the healthy 
human body, I may say that many of the methods by which 
Professor Kuhne, L)r. Sanderson, and others, have attempted to 
ascertain whether the different tissues contain actual or ‘■potential” 
germs are pointless in the face of the statements of heterogenists, 
since their methods cannot enable them to say, when positive 
results are obtained, that the “potential” germs from which, as 
they assume, the organisms have been developed are other than 
elementary particles of the previously healthy, though now altered, 
tissues, or that they have not been produced from the fluids which 
the tissues contain. These experimental observations are not only 
almost valueless on this account, but they are altogether needlessly 
complex. Why resort to heated knives, boiled thread, rapid move- 
ments, frequent immersions in paraffin at 260° F., paper boxes, 
warm chambers, &c., when precisely similar results might be 
obtained by simply leaving the dead animal alone for three or more 
days, and then subjecting the central tissues of either of the viscera 
to microscopical examination? So far as the principle of the 
method is concerned, or the kind of results which it may yield, it 
makes no difference whether we keep an extracted portion of tissue 
enveloped in paraffin in a warm chamber for hours or days, or 
resort to the much simpler method of leaving the animal unopened 
for several days before submitting its tissues to examination. In 
