I 9 2 



CAN DISEASE GERMS 



Now it is certain that such particles are very 

 numerous, and are commonly found in masses of 

 bioplasm so situated as to render their entrance 

 from without not only possible, but probable. 

 The fact of the amoeba opening itself as it were, and 

 then enclosing upon foreign particles, and embedding 

 them in its very substance, is well known. Nor is 

 this a phenomenon peculiar to the amoeba, but it is 

 possessed by other kinds of germinal matter. And 

 now that the supposed importance and even the 

 actual existence in many cases of the cell-wall has 

 been disproved, and the active spontaneous move- 

 ment which used to be called amoebiform, because it 

 was supposed to be peculiar to the amoeba, has 

 been proved to be common to living matter in gene- 

 ral, it is probable that this and other vital pro- 

 perties, equally characteristic of all kinds of matter 

 in a living state, will at last be admitted. 



It must then be regarded as at least possible 

 that particles of contagious living matter less than 

 the yooVoo f an mcn m diameter might pass into the 

 substance of a white blood, lymph, or chyle corpuscle, 

 and thus embedded, the particle might be carried to 

 all parts of the system. The matter itself might 

 increase and multiply in the corpuscle, destroying it 

 and living at its expense until the new collection 

 attained a size larger than that of the corpuscle ; or 

 the foreign living particles in -the white blood cor- 

 puscle might interfere with its division and sub- 



