The Pehrine Corpuscles in the Stihuwm. 177 



tains the nutrition of the blood and tissues." In this light the 

 chloroancBmia of early syphilis is most readily explained — a con- 

 dition which is constant in all but benign cases, and which consti- 

 tutes an important indication for successful treatment. 



6. Pehrine and syphilis are, alike, diseases of the hlood. In 

 a healthy state the blood of the larve is a transparent albuminous 

 fluid — colourless in the case of those races which produce white 

 silk ; and golden yellow in those which produce yellow silk. Under 

 the microscope, innumerable spherical bodies appear, of various 

 sizes, the largest of which does not in its gi-eatest diameter exceed 

 • 0039 of an inch. They seem endowed with individual vitality, 

 and continually reproduce themselves during the life of the insect. 

 When the latter is infected with pebrine, the number of the blood- 

 globules decreases — thus inducing a species of chloroanaemia — and 

 the albuminous fluid becomes charged with an immense number of 

 minute animated corpuscles "01 of an inch in diameter, increasing 

 in proportion to the disappearance of its normal ingredients. These 

 are the pebrine corpuscles already described, which Pasteur is dis- 

 posed to regard as the parasitic germs of a species of psorosperm. 

 They are oval or reniform in contour, destitute of cili^, and move 

 rapidly, apparently at will, sometimes advancing and sometimes 

 receding in the vascular channel. 



The genus " psorosperm " was first established by Jean Muller, 

 after his observation of certain anomalous organisms in difierent 

 varieties of fishes, and especially in the fresh -water pike. But 

 certain later expressions of Pasteur seem to imply that his mind is 

 not perfectly clear as to the parasitic character of the germs de- 

 scribed by him. In some of his communications to the Academy 

 of Sciences, for example, he uses language from which it might be 

 inferred that the disease originated in generations of the ancestors 

 of these worms, whose connective tissue had undergone a pecuhar 

 cell-metamorphosis . 



It is well known that Beale * adduces very strong grounds for 

 the belief that contagious disease germs are not parasites, and his 

 opinions are largely the result of researches upon the subject of the 

 cattle-plague. Let it be supposed, in accordance with his views, 

 that the corpuscles described by Pasteur are bioplasts — contagious 

 living disease germs — that they are the descendants of blood or 

 tissue bioplasts; that subsequently, either by hyper-nutrition or 

 retrogression, they have undergone a conversion of energy, and 

 become powerful to self-multiply indefinitely, and powerless to 

 build up new and normal structures. This would explain the 

 amoebiform movement of the pebrine corpuscles, their contagious- 

 ness, their virulence, and their destructiveness. Not only so, but it 

 would do away with the need of resorting to a novel species of 

 * ' Disease Germs ; their Nature aad Origin.' Lionel S. Beale. London : 1872. 



