FARTHER INVESTIGATION NEEDED. 133 



FARTHER INVESTIGATION NEEDED. 



Many other instances of a like nature might be brought 

 forward, if time would permit, but it is no part of my inten- 

 tion to treat this subject exhaustively. Some of the cases 

 seem to show that the poison is of the nature of a local irri- 

 tant only, as appears in Dr. Koch's demonstration of the 

 bacillus tuberculosis ; while many others seem to be general 

 poisons, with special tendencies to particular organs, as is seen 

 in the splenic fever produced by the bacillus anthracis. This 

 is sufficient to show that there is much yet to be learned in 

 this direction ; indeed, that this work is as yet in its infancy. 

 In truth, the work done thus far has been in the nature of 

 proving that organisms are regularly connected with the fer- 

 mentations and decompositions, and also with certain processes 

 of disease, rather than any effort to show how they bring 

 about these results. This was necessary in the first instance, 

 as the forerunner of a farther and more complete understand- 

 ing of the subject that must come from a closer study of the 

 modes through which these low organisms produce their 

 effects. It is plain that we cannot know any one of the disease 

 germs until all of the products of its remoleculizations have 

 been isolated and studied separate and apart from the organism 

 itself, as has been done with the products of so many of the 

 higher animals and plants. I see no other plan by which we 

 can ever know the capabilities and all of the possibilities of 

 micro-organisms, in connection with the production of disease. 

 In most cases of the discovery of poisonous properties in the 

 higher plants, the specific product of the plant in which that 

 poison resides has proven itself capable of isolation by the 

 means known to chemists ; and the disease-producing poisons 

 of the lower organisms will do the same when the effort to 

 find them has been prosecuted with sufficient skill and energy. 

 As alcohol has been isolated, as the vegetable alkaloids have 



