36 PHYSIC 



local nervine bacterial invasion progress along the lines 

 of least resistance within the body, until the whole has 

 been literally leavened by the fell bacterial organisms. 

 The sequence, therefore, of the evolution of the sympto- 

 matology of acute rheumatism may thus be traced and read 

 along the lines here indicated, as the stages of invasion 

 and occupancy are accomplished, until the entire corporeal 

 commonwealth is overrun and subdued, when we see the 

 "conquering host" victorious, waiting the vis medicatnx 

 nature, it may be, with its allies, science and art, once 

 more to assert itself, and clear the affected domain of its 

 foreign occupants and obnoxious toxic impedimenta. It 

 might here be remarked that, in the most typical cases of 

 acute rheumatism, the materies morbi is most probably 

 telluric in origin, and that it effects an entrance into the 

 lymph spaces surrounding the nervous system by aerial 

 convection and contact with the escaping perspiration and 

 transpiration, and zymotic genetic progress or zymosis 

 thereafter, along the layers of that fluid, as they flow out 

 of the cerebro-spinal cavity into the inner recesses of the 

 central nervous system. Microbes, of the character here 

 indicated, may be supposed to abound more or less every- 

 where on the earth's surface at all times, and to be con- 

 stantly on the alert for a suitable "breeding place" ; it, 

 therefore, but requires to be presented to be accepted and 

 utilised. Insect plagues are more or less the constant 

 companions of man and animals ; it is, therefore, not to 

 be wondered at that these insect plagues are accompanied, 

 and preyed upon, by smaller insect plagues, and so on ad 

 infinitum, or until the absolutely smallest living organism 

 closes the biological scene. In this light we have not far 

 to seek for the reason of the evolution of formic acid in 

 this insect and bacterial struggle. 



It is most interesting, besides instructive, to trace the 

 waxing and waning " of the toxic and antitoxic struggle, 

 embraced in an attack of, and recovery from, acute 

 rheumatism, and to mark the occurrence of what are called 

 complications cardiac and others as the disease runs its 

 course along the anatomical and histological lines traversed 

 by the ordinary physiological media in the course of their 

 meeting the daily healthy requirements of the human 



