420 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
have been originally derived by descent from the normal proto- 
plasm of the body, but had grown and multiplied under special 
and exceptional conditions, and have thus assumed specific con- 
tagious characters, forming what Dr. Beale calls “ contagious 
bioplasts.”’ These germs, he says, will retain their vitality for 
long periods of time, and yet, if they gain access to an appro- 
priate soil, will grow and multiply rapidly. But what proof has 
he yet given that living matter taken out of the hving human 
body will retain its vitality even for one day or one hour? Dr. 
Beale has furnished none. It is nothing to the purpose to say 
that many low forms of life in certain states will retain their 
vitality for a length of time, even when dried up. These were 
entire organisms. They were not mere particles of tissues, 
taken from a highly complex organism. His theory, therefore, 
is found wanting at the very outset. Mr. Newton next gave a 
full account of Mr. Davaine’s experiments, and others, which 
showed that, by injecting blood in certain stages of putrefaction 
into the cellular tissue of animals a disease is produced capable 
of being transmitted to others in an unlimited series by inocula- 
tion of the fresh blood of the animals affected ; the disease in- 
duced continually increasing in severity, so that in the twenty- 
fifth series one millionth of a drop of blood sufficed to kill. The 
blood from typhus and typhoid patients had a similar effect. 
The symptoms induced were compared with those observed in 
cases of pyxmia, puerperal fever, erysipelas, &c., and it was 
maintained that the poison of zymotic diseases consists of particles 
of animal matter in a state of unstable equilibrium, verging on 
putrefaction, which, if introduced into a living body, especially one 
in a low state of vitality, may induce similar changes to those of the 
body from which it was derived. 
