66 VEGETABLE GERMS 



animals, and probably from the earliest age, and in all 

 stages of health, vegetable germs do exist. These 

 germs are in a dormant or quiescent state, but may 

 become active and undergo development during life 

 should the conditions favourable to their increase be 

 manifested. Indeed, if the flow of fluid which persists 

 in the normal state in the ultimate parts of the tissues 

 as long as life lasts be stopped, changes take place 

 exactly resembling those which are occasioned in 

 dead tissues removed from the body, and kept at a 

 temperature of 100 degrees. As has been remarked, 

 " decomposition " takes place, and, if this decomposi- 

 tion is not a consequence of the multiplication of the 

 vegetable organisms, it is at any rate certain that 

 the growth and multiplication of these bodies are 

 constantly associated with the change in question. 

 There cannot be a doubt that vegetable germs exist 

 in the internal parts of the body which would grow 

 under the circumstances supposed. 



The higher life is, I think, everywhere interpene- 

 trated as it were by the lowest life. Probably there 

 is not a tissue in which these germs do not exist, nor is 

 the blood of man free from them. They are found not 

 only in the interstices of tissues, but they invade the 

 elementary parts themselves. Multitudes infest the 

 old epithelial cells of many of the internal surfaces, 

 and grow and flourish in the very substance of the 

 formed material of the cell itself. But the living 

 germinal matter of the tissues and organs is probably 



