OF DISEASE GERMS. 



257 



multiplication of a single white blood-corpuscle. Each series grows 

 faster than the one from which it originated. In the plan, the process 

 of multiplication is represented as if it only occurred in the case of one 

 particle in each series ; but in order to afford an accurate conception of 

 the process, similar radiating lines must be supposed to diverge from 

 every part of the circumference of every particle, a is a white blood - 

 corpuscle ; b, c, d, and <?, successive series of particles which produce 

 others, until at last contagious disease germs, f, result. In this par- 

 ticular instance we seem to almost succeed in demonstrating the manner 

 in which a very highly contagious bioplasm originates in hospital and 

 camp fever. 



In certain forms of erysipelas, purulent ophthalmia, 

 and analogous contagious diseases, which sometimes 

 originate in an isolated population living under 

 certain conditions adverse to health, it is almost im- 

 possible to doubt that the living germs are developed 

 in the same manner as the virulent pus bioplasts pro- 

 duced in peritonitis from the bioplasm which was once 

 in a normal healthy state. And the same reasoning 

 leads to the inference that the generation of the 

 poison of many contagious diseases, and all contagious 

 fevers, occurs in the same way. It is certain that 

 many cases of blood-poisoning, and various forms of 

 idiopathic fever, depend upon the passage into the 

 blood, and its dissemination through the system, of a 

 poisonous bioplasm which has been generated in the 

 body, the virulent bioplasm itself having resulted from 

 the growth and multiplication of generations of 

 particles derived by continuous succession from the 

 normal bioplasm of the organism. 



In some cases the morbid living matter found in 



