94 



PHYSIC 



almost every individual tissue and organ. Thus the 

 parasites sometimes live in common with their hosts on 

 the elements of the common food supply, while sometimes 

 attaching themselves for sustenance to particular struc- 

 tures or organs, the contagious taking more or less general 

 possession of the total liquids and solids of the body, and 

 the infectious comporting themselves according to their 

 local and general likes and dislikes ; they thus attack 

 among them, in general or in detail, the whole organic 

 elements, either in organic mass, in structural division, or 

 cellular unit, and hence, roughly, they are divisible into 

 fully developed and differentiated organisms, cellular com- 

 munities, or uni-cellular organisms, and organised particles 

 capable of intra-cellular life and development, and so, indi- 

 vidually, they are able to annihilate en masse or reduce 

 in detail the strongest body and the most resistant struc- 

 tures, the last mentioned being able to effect the process 

 of absolute disintegration of organised matter, plastic or 

 solid. 



Zymosis and sepsis are thus to a considerable extent 

 identical in meaning, and signify, in preventive and cura- 

 tive medicine, an extent of area of ever rapidly increasing 

 and widening proportions, but an area, nevertheless, which 

 the rapidly progressive march of bacteriological knowledge 

 and research are coping with in the most hopeful manner, 

 and demonstrating that the trend of progress in medicine 

 is ever towards prevention of disease, through the dis- 

 covery of its causes, and the application of scientifically 

 devised means of prohibition and neutralisation. There- 

 fore, we feel warranted in holding the opinion that as thus 

 much of the disease and suffering to which " human flesh 

 is heir" is likely to be eliminated from its long category, 

 and finally, barring accident, that there is, or will be, a 

 chance given for man to live to the full extent of his 

 attainable existence before yielding to the incidence of old 

 age and final dissolution. 



