May 15, 1879] 



NATURE 



53 



organisms in the blood as epi-phenomena in the course of 

 certain diseases can scarcely be explained except by the 

 supposition that archebiosis or heterogenesis (one or both) 

 have taken place in their altered blood, or in blood and 

 tissues simultaneously. 



This the present writer long ago pointed out, and he 

 strongly insisted upon it in a paper published about 

 eighteen months ago,' but which does not seem to hare 

 reached Dr. Lewis before the printing of his present 

 work. Attention was there specially called to the fact 

 that organisms speedily appeared in the blood of pre- 

 viously healthy animals or of human beings suddenly 

 killed, in such situations and under such conditions as to 

 make it almost impossible to account for their presence 

 except by the occurrence of one or other of the processes 

 above mentioned, giving rise in situ to a new birth of such 

 microphytes. Organisms can, in fact, be made to appear 

 at will (as Lewis and Cunningham, as well as Sanderson, 

 had shown) in localised parts of previously healthy or- 

 ganisms by lowering the nutrition in certain ways of such 

 parts of the body, i.e., by either tying the artery supplying 

 the part with nutrient fluid, or by subjecting the part to 

 the influence of some germless chemical irritant. On the 

 other hand, when the nutrient processes throughout the 

 body are checked by the death of the animal, the produc- 

 tion of microphytes, which was before local, now, as the 

 ■writer has several times pointed out, becomes general. 



Let the germ-theorists look to these facts and give us a 

 ■jpetter explanation if they can ; because in the cases above 

 referred to, organisms appear in tissues which they them- 

 selve have proclaimed to be germless, and in blood which 

 they have declared to_be free from all antecedent signs of 

 microphytes. 



The facts of the latter order have been distinctly con- 

 firmed by Dr. Lewis. He says : " Rats were obtained, 

 killed by means of chloroform, and set aside from three 

 to twenty-four hours or longer, according as the tempe- 

 rature of the atmosphere was high or low. The result 

 proved that almost invariably bacilli were to be found in 

 the blood, in the spleen, and in other organs." 



It appears, however, and the fact is one of considerable 

 significance, that when death takes place in certain 

 modes (as by poisoning with carbonic acid or carbonic 

 oxide), organisms have a still greater tendency to appear 

 in the blood and that they manifest themselves with sur- 

 prising rapidity. 



A man who was sent to seek for rats, having found, 

 " That he could procure more than could be accommodated 

 1' in the cage which he had brought with him, he obtained 

 a large earthen vessel, transferred twenty-seven rats into 

 it, and tied a piece of cloth over the mouth of the vessel. 

 As may be supposed, the rats had perished before he got 

 home — all except one. ... I examined the blood and 

 the spleen of twenty of these rats within about six to 

 I eight hours of their having been caught, and found in 

 each case that there were innumerable bacilli present, in 

 every way morphologically identical with Bacillus 

 anthracis? In some of the cases the number was aston- 

 ishing. They were present chiefly in the form of rods, 

 ^ but here and there some were seen to have grown to such 



'. ' " On the Conditions Favouring Fermcntalionj &c.," Journal of Linnean 

 ( Soc. (Zool.), vol. xiv. pp. 89-93. 



* That is, the bacillus met with in association with charbon or splenic 

 fever. 



a length as to cover two fields of the microscope. . . 

 This experience tends to give support to the statement 

 made by M. Signol before the French Academy, to the 

 effect that motionless bacilli identical with those found m 

 charbon, will be found in sixteen hours, or less, after death, 

 in the blood of animals which have been asphyxiated by 

 means of a charcoal fire." 



Dr. Lewis shows that these organisms which make 

 their appearance within the bodies of animals so soon 

 after death are not only morphologically indistinguish- 

 able from Bacillus anthracis, but that they 'go on, under 

 suitable conditions, to the so-called "spore" formation 

 in precisely the same manner. The characters of these 

 organisms under different conditions are well shown in 

 PI. I. 



But if mere modes of dying influence the quickness with 

 which such organisms appear in the body after death, it 

 is not inconsistent to suppose that they may in certain 

 cases — that is, in association with certain morbid pro- 

 cesses — be much more prone than in others to show 

 themselves as epi-pheaomena. And this seems to corre- 

 spond with what actually occurs ; in many contagious 

 diseases, as above stated, such organisms seem to be 

 absent, in a few they show themselves, and that by far 

 the most frequently in cases where death is already prettv 

 closely at hand. 



Referring to the bacilli met with in malignant pustule 

 (charbon), septicaemia, and the so-called "typhoid 

 fever," in the pig, horse, and other animals. Dr. Lewis 

 says : " It may be confidently stated that they are never 

 to be detected in the earlier stages of the disease, but 

 only at a brief period before and after a fatal terminar 

 tion. To my knowledge they have never been found in 

 the blood of animals which have subsequently recovered ; 

 they have always been recognised only as one of the 

 concomitants of impending dissolution. This is un- 

 doubtedly the case so far as the twp diseases first cited 

 are concerned." 



Those who are the warmest advocates of the germ- 

 theory of disease — a doctrine resting on sufficiently tm- 

 stable foundations— are not always cautious or discreet 

 in the way they speak of others who lean to a belief 

 that the organisms met with in association with disease 

 are mere epi-phenomena, often produced within the body 

 by a process of heterogenesis. Yet the latter interpreta- 

 tion, so far as present knowledge goes, seems to the 

 writer essential for the explanation of our power to deter- 

 mine, at will, the presence of microphytes in the germless 

 tissues or germless blood of previously healthy animals.' 



H. Charlton Bastian 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



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Antiquity of Orchids 

 I HAVE been struck by a most cogent remark of Mr. Wallace's 

 in his review of Mr. Allen's "The Colour Sense" (Nature, 

 vol. xix. p. 501), viz., "But surely in orchids the perianth 



