BEALE. 59 



which occurs so generally in carcinoma is due to the wander- 

 ing of young cells or bioplasts from the seat of the tumor, 

 which have, through a process of physiological degradation, 

 acquired new properties by which they are enabled to initiate 

 a new focus of disease wherever they may lodge in the tissue. 

 These are found to wander along the course of the lymph 

 streams especially, and to a lesser extent along the blood 

 streams. There is also a certain wandering among the 

 neighboring tissues, infiltration. 



Such diseases, however, are never contagious, in the ordinary 

 sense of that term, and such cells do not acquire any power of 

 continued life when isolated from the animal economy. 



In arguing the point, Dr. Beale does not insist that in each 

 individual case the white corpuscles of the blood must pro- 

 duce the germs of contagion. f< For," he says, " the facts may 

 be accounted for solely by the proliferation and growth of the 

 acquired germs or those that have been implanted from with- 

 out. But," he says, " the fact that living matter of the blood 

 of one individual will live in the blood vessels of another, 

 that the skin, periosteum and other tissues may be trans- 

 planted and grafted, prepare us for the remarkable circum- 

 stance, demonstrated by experiment, that living pus bioplasts, 

 which have, indeed, been derived from normal bioplasm, may 

 traverse long distances, free and independent, and then, gain- 

 ing access to other organisms, may live and grow and multiply 

 in them, and establish changes of the same kind as those which 

 were taking place at the seat of their origin." 



In speaking of the first origin of contagions, he says, "It is 

 possible that the exceedingly minute living particles which 

 constitute the ( contagium ' of contagious diseases may be the 

 degraded offspring of some kind of normal living matter or 

 bioplasm, which originally possessed comparatively exalted 



tissue-forming, or other formative powers The 



4 



