ZYMOSIS 87 



life generally, and in a constantly increasing number of 

 the diseases affecting the human organism in particular, 

 as they become better known in their nature and essence, 

 as pathological research is brought to bear on them. The 

 process implies that a more highly organised body may 

 become tenanted by another body of a more lowly organ- 

 ised order, the latter multiplying itself and procreating 

 its species at the expense of the former, thereby affecting 

 its health, and sometimes even destroying its life. 



The diseases thus affecting the human species are 

 numerous, widespread in their incidence, and often most 

 fatal in their consequences. They embrace a wide range 

 of morbid conditions, febrile and non-febrile, local and 

 general, and are due to the invasion of a part or the 

 whole of the infected organism by a microbe or bacillus, 

 which lives and multiplies according to its generic and 

 individual character and nature, and whose incubation, 

 growth, and continued presence or expulsion synchronise 

 with certain conspicuous features and well-marked stages 

 of the resultant zymotic condition. The natural history 

 of many of these disease-producing organisms is now well 

 known to science, and has given a name to a department 

 of biology known as bacteriology, the future of which 

 seems likely to be fraught with eminently beneficent results 

 to the human race, and its immediate lower relatives, in 

 the very possible and highly probable additions which are 

 likely to accrue to preventive as well as curative medicine 

 from the continuance of its progress along definite and 

 scientifically dictated lines. 



The first diseases to be understood, described, and 

 classified as zymotic were the fevers, exanthematous and 

 non-exanthematous, but others have constantly been added 

 as bacteriological knowledge has increased and become 

 more exact, until now they have become one of the largest 

 groups of classified morbid conditions amongst the 

 authentically proved and accepted category of human 

 ailments. Moreover, besides the, what may be called, 

 systemic constitutional or general zymotic diseases, a 

 large class of local diseased conditions may be dominated 

 local zymotic, as distinguished from the grosser parasitic, 

 or non-zymotic, ailments, as respective types or illustrative 



