GENERAL PATHOLOaT. 71 



The science of Pathology which has made such mighty- 

 strides during the last half century, has yet to search out the 

 nature and perchance figure the form of those poisonous 

 germs which develop zymotic disease ; to give them distinct- 

 iveness by due classification, and to separate or identify 

 their action on and power over the animal economy, with 

 those of the well known poisons of the mineral or vegetable 

 world, especially, perhaps, of the sporules of the various 

 tribes of fungi. The work though vast, is not beyond present 

 hope. It has now all the preparation needed to justify 

 the loftiest claim, and maintain the highest attitude of 

 expectancy. The microscope which has depictured and 

 classified the various forms of spermatozoids constituting 

 the generative power of the divers species of the animal 

 kingdom; which has counted the number of the dust 

 sporules* which feed upon vegetable products useful to 

 man and beast, and which, as we have seen, reveals to the 

 eye the various shapes of blood corpuscles when invaded by 

 various parasites of variant diseases, may yet so group its 

 subtle lenses and direct their ken into such unexplored 

 hiding places, and triumphantly parade the tiniest instru- 

 ments of torture which the common enemy of all things 

 living employs.t While we await with becoming patience, 

 such wondrous revelations, we are not without the analogies 

 of nature in disease to assist and advance our investigations. 



Dr. Salisbury, of Ohio, in the presence of an alarming 

 epidemic of scarlatina, inoculated himself and family with 

 the smut of the Indian corn, produced an eruption and fever 

 similar to that of the prevailing distemper, and effectually 

 warded oft' the contagion. Had he gone a step further, and 

 ingrafted the poisonous fluid developed by this coniomycete 

 ui)on a healthy structure, he would have identified or shown 



* The sporule of the Uredo segetum, one of the most minute of the coniomycetous fungi which 

 attack gramineous plants, has been decyphered as equal in size to l-7,860,000th part ol an inch 

 square. 



t The most serious difficulty in the present extension of microscopic vision, which has re- 

 vealed the multiplication of bacteria and low animal and vegetable organisms by powers esti- 

 mated at 3,000 diameters, does not seem to lie in a further extension of micrometric power, but in 

 the tran^arency of these infinitesimal germs ; a difficulty which may soon bo remedied by the 

 ingenious adaptations of enthasiastic observers. 



