184 HECAPIT U LATION. 



While I was impressed, for the reasons so ably stated 

 by Holland, with the greater probability of the organic 

 theory, I prefer, for reasons stated by myself, the fun- 

 gous, to the animalcular hypothesis. 



My preference is founded on the vast number, extra- 

 ordinary variety, minuteness, diffusion and climatic pecu- 

 liarities of the fungi. 



The spores of these plants are not only numerous, 

 minute, and indefinitely diffused, but they are so like to 

 animal cells, as to have the power of penetrating into, and 

 germinating upon, the most interior tissues of the human 

 body. 



Introduced into the body through the stomach, or by 

 tha skin or lungs, eryptogamous poisons were shown to 

 produee diseases of a febrile character, intermittent, re- 

 mittent and continued; which were most successfully 

 treated by wine and bark. 



Many cutaneous diseases, such as favm and mentagra, 

 are proved to be dependent upon cryptogamous vegeta- 

 tions; and even the disease of the mucous membrane, 

 termed aphthae, arises from the presence of minute fungi. 



As microscopic investigations become more minute, we 

 discover protophytes in diseases, where,, until our own 

 time, their existence was not even suspected, as in the dis- 

 charges of some kinds of dysentery, and in the mrcina of 

 pyrosis. We are therefore entitled to believe that dis- 

 covery will be r on this subject, progressive^ 



The detection f the origin of the nrascardine of the 

 silk worm 7 and a great many analogous diseases of in- 

 sects, fishes and reptiles, and the demonstration of the 

 cryptogamism of these maladies, their contagious character 

 in one species of animate, their transfer to many other 

 species, nay even to vegetables themselves, all concur to 



