THE MICROSCOPE. 153 
—(1) that all diarrhceas, not some diarrhceas, were often only a 
symptom of varied morbid conditions, as pointed out at the Cardiff 
meeting of the British Medical Association by Dr. Vacher; but, after 
all due allowance made, there undoubtedly remained a large residue 
of cases of a specific or special nature, constituting a disease per se, 
as much so as true Asiatic cholera; (2) that that disease was not a 
disease of infancy or early childhood only, or even for the greater 
part. Exact observations showed that the bulk of sufferers 
from it where it prevailed were of more mature years, though, owing 
to the mortality occurring almost exclusively amongst young child- 
ren, this fact had often been overlooked. Of all English towns, 
Leicester was, par excellence, the home of this disease, if its mortality 
was to be taken as a true criterion of its prevalence. During the 
past three years, since holding the office of Medical Officer of Health 
there, Dr. Tomkins had paid special attention to the subject. It 
was easy to disprove that many of the reputed cases gave no satis- 
factory explanation of the production of the disease. Many of these 
affect only the infantile population, and affect these more or less 
throughout the whole town, whereas the prevalence of the disease 
was confined to certain well-defined low-lying districts of the town 
and affected all ages and occupations, ete., within those districts. 
The cause must be something common to every resident within those 
districts, which something was apparently absent in other parts of 
the borough. The only things or conditions common to all were 
food supplies, water and air. The two former were the same 
throughout the whole town. There remained, therefore, only the 
air. During the past three years Dr. Tomkins has undertaken a 
large series of observations on the air, with special reference to the 
microbic forms of life contained therein. The general result showed 
that the air of the diarrhcea district of the town contained three to 
six times as many micro-organisms or their germs as the air of the 
non-affected districts. These microbes (or certain of them) grew in 
a distinctive manner when artificially cultivated, and were capable of 
producing diarrhcea, or perhaps, more correctly speaking, the pro- 
ducts of their artificial cultivation were capable of producing 
diarrhcea in the human subject. At present Dr. Tomkins was 
endeavoring to isolate and single out the particular form or forms 
which were most concerned in this. The organisms and growths 
obtained from various tissues, organs, and intestines in fatal cases of 
diarrhoea give like results. A very probable explanation of the un- 
due prevalence of diarrhoea in Leicester, or rather in certain parts of 
that town, was found in this excess of aérial microbes and germs, and 
