5O THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 



corpuscle, or the growth of pus by chemistry ? 

 Does the poison of measles differ from that of 

 small-pox chemically or mechanically, or in 

 some other way ? Is the escape of one indi- 

 vidual and the invasion of another to be ac- 

 counted for upon mechanical principles, or has 

 the poison a chemical affinity for one, and an 

 instinctive antipathy to another ? 



In a common cold there is increase of living 

 matter, but, like the fact, the substance has 

 been ignored by physicists, chemists, and the 

 chemico-mechanical school of medicine. The 

 increase of living matter occurs in all fevers 

 and inflammations, but by the chemist this fact is 

 neither admitted nor recognized. The doctrine 

 of correlation will not assist us in interpreting 

 the phenomena. There is not a disease in 

 which it cannot be shown that vital, as distinct 

 from physical and chemical, changes are. at work. 

 Every remedial measure we employ does good 

 or harm in bringing about conditions which are 

 favourable or unfavourable to the growth and 

 multiplication of such soft, transparent, semi- 

 fluid, living, moving matter, quite irrespective 

 of any merely mechanical or chemical influence 

 it may exert. 



