MICROPHYTES FOUND IN THE BLOOD. 383 



with the blood of patients suffering from the fever, no matter 

 whether it contained spirilla or not.i 



It was, however, soon found that whereas spirilla could 

 generally be detected in cases of fever of this kind, nevertheless 

 cases every now and then occurred in which perfectly competent 

 observers failed to detect them in the blood from first to last, and 

 this too in cases not a whit less severe than those in which the 

 organisms abounded and which were under the care of the same 

 observers during the same period. 



Some discrepancy exists in the results of different observers as 

 to the presence of spirilla during apyrexia periods, as well as 

 regards their absence during the height of the paroxysm ; Birch- 

 Hirschfeld, for example, observed them two days after the crisis ;2 

 and Laskousky, basing his observations on thirty-two cases, 

 says that they increase contemporaneously with increase of tem- 

 perature f whereas Heydenreich maintains that high temperature 

 tends to destroy them — he having found that not only were they 

 most numerous in the blood shortly before the fever was at its 

 height, but that, also, outside of the body they would retain their 

 movements longer in a room at 18° to 21° C. than at a higher tem- 

 perature. He had been able to keep active spirilla in a prepara- 

 tion from a week to a fortnight at this temperature, whereas the 

 spirilla died in from 15 to 21 hours when kept at blood heat 

 (;37o_38° C). At 40°— 41° C. they were found to perish still 

 sooner — namely, in from 4 to 12 hours.* 



Although, as above shown, they can be preserved alive for a 

 comparatively long time outside the body, nevertheless, every 

 attempt which has been made to ' cultivate ' them has proved 

 abortive ; no change has been observed to take place in them 

 either in size or in number, notwithstanding that they have 

 been ' cultivated ' in media of various kinds and at different 

 temperatures. 



E. — The relation of Microphytes to Bisease. 

 In the preceding sections the leading facts regarding the con- 

 nection of living organisms with the occurrence of disease have 

 been detailed ; it now remains to consider what grounds there are 

 forbidding the adoption of the doctrine of a germ theory of 

 disease ; — why, for example, we should not at once admit that 

 splenic disease is caused by bacteria-rods, and that the aim of 

 treatment should be the destruction of the vitality of those rods ; 

 or that recurrent fever is cause by screw-bacteria, and such 

 remedial measures resorted to as tend to destroy them. 



1 Heydenreich, ' Ueber den Parasiten des Riickfallstypbus,' S. 38, 1877. 



2 Sclimidt's ' Jahrbiicher,' Band, cxvi, S. 211, 1875. 

 ' Ileydenreicli's ' Riickfallslyplius/ p. 39. 



* Loc. cit., pp. 100 and 101. 



