92 PHYSIC 



In view of such common characteristics, clinical, bac- 

 teriological, and general, we think we are warranted in 

 insisting on the adoption of a classification and nosology 

 which will more strictly accord with the requirements of 

 science, and be less misleading in its bearings on the choice 

 of the preventive and curative lines of treatment most 

 likely to be successful in obviating the occurrence of epi- 

 demics of the disease and securing its extinction on its 

 earliest appearance. 



The retention of the terms Asiatic and British, as indi- 

 cating two different diseases, is not warranted by fact, and 

 can consequently not be continued without violating an 

 essential necessity of all scientific progress, viz. truth. 

 We would, therefore, urge that our nomenclature here 

 requires overhauling and modification in order to bring 

 it up to "the requirements of the times" in both a 

 utilitarian and scientific respect. 



Zymosis, besides typically delivering its attacks on these 

 main lines, invades the human body by "sapping and 

 mining" through every loophole or vulnerable point pre- 

 sented to the outer world, and many a disease owes its 

 origin and development to the stealthy invasion of a 

 single channel, or, it may be, a few lymphatic spaces and 

 associated vessels, as, for instance, hydrophobia, where it 

 attacks its victim through a single opening into the cuta- 

 neous tissues, through which its virus finally reaches the 

 cerebro-spinal lymph cavity, either by way of the nerve 

 vasculature directly, or by way of the lymph vasculature 

 into the blood vasculature, or by way of the blood vascu- 

 lature into the cerebro-spinal cavity and contained nerve 

 structures indirectly. According, therefore, to which of 

 these lines may be traversed singly or in combination by 

 the virus, the time of the manifestation of specific symp- 

 toms is determined, and the time for prophylactic treatment 

 regulated. Zymosis here seems to be effected by a com- 

 paratively limited and slowly progressive bacterial growth 

 along definite anatomical and histological lines, neural, 

 lymphatic, or haemal, and to manifest itself in the produc- 

 tion of the characteristic symptoms in consequently most 

 irregular fashion and at most uncertain intervals, according 

 to the length of distance traversed by the poison and the 



