cxxviii THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



the natural working of the animal economy is disturbed ; the 

 person is ill. The transformation is not arrested until the 

 whole of that ingredient in the blood which is susceptible of 

 the decomposition has undergone the metamorphosis 1 / 

 The specific poison (contagium) does not, however, seem to 

 be immediately reproduced in the blood of the person 

 affected: rather, a set of changes are set up in the blood 

 which ultimately lead to the evolution of such a poison in 

 some part or parts of the body; so that, as Mr. Simon 

 says 2 , ' Bowels, skin, kidney, tonsils, are the favourite resorts 

 of the several fever-poisons just as they are the surfaces by 

 which naturally the organic waste of the several tissues is 

 eliminated V 



There are many organic poisons which undoubtedly pro- 

 duce spreading changes in the blood. Writing from Australia, 

 Prof. Halford says 4 : ' In fatal cases of snake-poisoning, 

 whether in this colony, India, America, or Africa, it may be 

 stated as a rule, with few exceptions, that the blood loses its 



1 Ch. Robin says, in his ' Vegetaux Parasites,' 1853, p. 376: 'On a 

 confondu un phenomena grossier et physique, de transport de vegetal 

 d'un sol sur un autre, plus ou moins favorable, avec la question de con- 

 tagion. Celle-ci est au contraire caracterisee par une modification 

 mol^culaire lente des substances organiques se propageant de proche en 

 proche, sous 1'influence du contact dautres substances organiques pre- 

 sentant de"ja elles-memes une modification analogue. S'il y a quelque 

 chose de contagieux dans cette transplantation, c'est la putrefaction des 

 substances azotees qu'on transporte, et elles determinent dans les mucus 

 sains un alteration analogue a celle qu'elles ont eprouvee. Mais il n'y a 

 rien la qui appartienne en propre au vegetal et doive lui etre attribue.' 

 See also pp. 307-309. 



2 Lectures on Pathology. 



3 A similar view has been advocated on more than one occasion by 

 Dr. B. W. Richardson. He says (' Medical Times and Gazette,' 

 November 5th, 1870, p. 539) : ' A person suffering from a communicable 

 disease is poisonous precisely as a cobra di capello is poisonous that is 

 to say, he is producing by secretion an organic poison, which, if it comes 

 into contact in the right way with a healthy person, will reproduce 

 disease.' See also the ' Transactions of the Epidemiological Society,' 

 vol. i. 



* On the Treatment of Snake- bite. 1870. 



