I4 8 VARIOLA FEVER. 



posed of living particles which have the same property 

 of living for some time in a state of partial desicca- 

 tion. 



Living Germs of Variola. 1 have examined the 

 contents of the little vesicle which rises in small-pox 

 at different stages of its development, and find, as in 

 allied pathological changes, vast multitudes of minute 

 particles of living matter or bioplasm, but, as will 

 have been anticipated from what has been already 

 said, these present nothing peculiar or characteristic, 

 nothing that would enable us to say if we saw these 

 particles under the microscope that they had been ob- 

 tained from a small-pox vesicle, and would certainly 

 give rise to that disease. I have made a drawing of 

 some of the varioloid bioplasts from a well-developed 

 vesicle on the fifth day of the disease, and also from 

 a vesicle which was just making its appearance. Plate 

 XVIIL, fig. 64. 



Living Germs of Fever. As was shown experi- 

 mentally of Dr. Sanderson, a mere trace of blood 

 serum was sufficient to propagate cattle plague. A 

 very small portion of blood or of the tissues of 

 an infected animal had the same effect. Nay, the 

 contagium is so subtle that in this as well as in 

 many other contagious diseases, the breath of the 

 diseased organism contains numbers of the potent par- 

 ticles of poison, and in this manner the very air 

 of a considerable space or even district may become 

 infected. 



