APPENDIX E. cxxiii 



answered in the negative. These parasitic diseases are 

 sharply distinguished from the others by the fact of their 

 almost invariable fatality. Creatures or persons once affected 

 in this way are, under ordinary circumstances, thenceforth 

 on the road to more or less immediate death. Happily, 

 however, no fatality of this kind is characteristic of even such 

 highly contagious diseases as scarlet fever and small-pox, or 

 any other of the maladies with which parasitic organisms 

 cannot be shown to be associated 1 . But if living things were 

 really present as causes of these diseases, then most assuredly 

 ought they to conform to that fatal type which is almost 

 inseparable from the notion of a general parasitic disease, 

 and which we find exemplified by the course of p/brine, the 

 ' blood/ and ' malignant pustule V Thus, the fact that the 

 general tendency in the acute specific diseases is undoubtedly 

 towards recovery rather than towards death, speaks strongly 

 against the resemblance supposed to exist between them and 

 the parasitic affections alluded to ; and also against the hypo- 

 thesis that they are dependent upon the presence of self- 

 multiplying germs within the body. Such germs, when pre- 

 sent and able to multiply in its blood, would be almost sure 

 to increase until they brought about the death of their host. 



These considerations alone should suffice to inspire 

 grave doubts as to the truth of the ' germ-theory.' And 

 such doubts may be reinforced by many others. Thus, the 

 several affections being distinct from one another, this 

 theory demands a belief in the existence of about twenty 

 different kinds of organisms never known in their mature 



1 Doubtless there are other general parasitic diseases amongst 

 animals. In almost all the specific diseases to which man is liable, 

 however, I have invariably failed to discover any trace of organisms in 

 the blood. The experience of many other observers has been similar to 

 my own in this respect. 



2 See a paper by Dr. William Budd, in British Medical Journal,' 

 1863. 



