114 DISEASES EN SUITE. 



and purifying cargoes and soiled baggage, becomes appa- 

 rently more imperative. 



I alluded, in the last paragraph, to the fungiferous tend- 

 encies at home, by which, may be invited from abroad, 

 an exotic fungus. This idea affords an explanation of a 

 fact universally noticed, but not easily otherwise explained. 

 I mean the growth of various diseases of a common cha- 

 racter, before the irruption of a great pestilence. If these 

 depend upon a fungous origin, their growth will be aug- 

 mented by the augmentation of their cause, until the 

 foreign intruder, urged by a new and inherent impulse, 

 and welcomed by a domestic facilitation, enters upon a 

 career of desolation. The fungiferous exaltation is 

 shown by the early ripening and imperfect maturation of 

 fruits and even roots, whose organs of reproduction are, 

 by invisible ergots, over-stimulated. The decay of roots 

 and fruits, the tainting of meats, and the moulding of 

 other things, are but parts of the unwholesome "crypto- 

 gamisin," which at length, intrudes upon living things; 

 when murrain among cattle, and pestilence among men, 

 complete the history of a calamitous period. 



Similar principles seem to govern the movements of 

 diseases now generally acknowledged to proceed from 

 germs. The contagious maladies, small-pox, measles, 

 scarlatina and hooping-cough, are almost always present 

 in some part of a great metropolis, or at least in some 

 part of a great country; yet their tendency to propagation 

 is often, for years, so slight as to confine their ravages to 

 a small number of victims. But at times, and sometimes 

 after long intervals of comparative inactivity, these affec- 

 tions suddenly acquire a wondrous expansibility. Their 

 germs are scattered far and wide. The slightest exposure 

 brings on disease, and where but a few individuals suffered, 



