Senehg Miceconis of Disease Germs. 201 
giving rise to millions of little particles like itself, each having 
similar properties and powers. 
I consider it to be almost certain that the material of which 
these particles are composed has the power of forming matter like 
itself from pabulum around it, which differs from it in properties 
and composition. Such living germs may pass from the organism 
on which they grew to another, and will grow and multiply there 
if they meet with the proper pabulum. The only condition in 
which matter is known to exhibit these powers of self-multiplica- 
tion is the living state. 
M. Chauveau* described these same bodies in 1868. It is 
evident he had not seen my observations, published in the Cattle- 
Plague Report, or my previous researches published in the Micro- 
scopical Transactions for 1863.f Chauyveau showed that the active 
particles subsided after forty-eight hours, and that no effects were 
produced by inoculating the albuminous supernatant fluid, while the 
full effects were produced by vaccinating with the deposit. As 
would be supposed from the excessive minuteness of these bodies, 
they are not to be separated by ordinary filtration, but if the fluid 
containing them also contains a trace of coagulable fibrin diffused 
through it, this by contraction after coagulation would filter off the 
little bioplasts, and leave a serum perfectly free. Dr. Farr calls 
the living particles biads (fia, force, Bios, life), and speaks of the 
vaccine particles as vaccinads.~ These words are better than 
microzyme, adopted by Mr. Simon and others, because they in- 
volve no theory save that the particles are living, while the latter 
term affirms them to be of the nature of a ferment acting like yeast. 
The circumstance that vaccine lymph retains its activity if kept 
in a tube for several weeks, seems conclusive as to the possibility of 
the particles retaining their vitality for a considerable time after 
they have been removed from the place where they grew; the ar- 
guments advanced, as proving that the active power resides in the 
particles and not in the fluid, being admitted. It is not more diffi- 
cult to explain the fact that such living particles may be dried 
without losing their power, than that an amceba or rotifer should 
exhibit the same peculiarity. As this property is observed in con- 
nection with many of the lower forms of life, we might almost 
anticipate that the living matter from the highest organisms, it 
reduced to a degraded condition, would retain its vitality under 
circumstances which would cause its death in its normal condition. 
Yet it must not be supposed that these particles, any more than 
the “dried animalcules,” are really dried. Some moisture is re- 
* ‘Comptes Rendus,’ February, 1868. 
+ “Beale had, before Chauveau, declared that the ‘active properties of vaccine 
lymph are entirely and solely due’ to these corpuscles. He has figured them,”— 
Dr. Farr, ‘ Report on the Cholera Epidemic of 1866,’ p. Ixviil. 
t ‘Report on the Cholera Epidemic of 1866,’ p. Ixx. 
