132 THE GEKM THEORY OF DISEASE. 



more, and then the symptoms come on more slowly and grad- 

 ually increase in violence usually until death is induced. A 

 progressive disease is the result in the one case, an immediate, 

 but transient poisoning in the other. This difference in the 

 results of inoculations made with fluids rendered poisonous by 

 the development of micro-organisms within them, and similar 

 inoculations with fluids containing micro-organisms but with- 

 out sufficient developed poison to produce immediate effects, 

 has been marked by a large number of investigators and is 

 now perfectly well known. 



Putrefaction does not always result in the formation of 

 virulent poisons. Many times meats, or meat infusions, may 

 rot away, and poisons of a very marked character cannot be 

 found at any stage of the process. This difference must be 

 explained by the fact that the same micro-organisms have not 

 grown in the one as in the other. If the ordinary bacteria of 

 decomposition are accompanied by a form that produces a 

 virulent alkaloid as a result of its remoleculizations, the poison 

 will be found, otherwise, it will not. Just as in a mass of 

 plants, one, or a few only of the many, will produce a viru- 

 lent poison, though all grow in the same soil. Again, as we 

 have said, the mycoderma aceti will feed upon the alcohol 

 formed as the waste product of the vinous yeast plant. In 

 the same way other micro-organisms may feed upon and 

 destroy, through their remoleculizations, the poisonous pro- 

 ducts of those that may have gone before them. Hence, it is 

 found that septic cadavers are apt to lose their septic characters 

 as decomposition advances. These facts, while they serve to 

 illustrate the manner of the formation of poisons, also illus- 

 trate the extreme complexity of the subject. 



