364 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



matter (either fluids or organisms) had the power of 

 setting up certain changes of a spreading character, 

 which soon sufficed to produce a condition of blood 

 similar to that usually preceding the development of 

 organisms in this disease. If the organisms acted qua 

 organisms, and not as ferments or producers of spread- 

 ing chemical changes in the fluids of the body, then we 

 should necessarily expect that other more or less similar 

 organisms would also be capable of multiplying them- 

 selves, and of producing general parasitic diseases. 

 This, however, is notoriously not the case. Fermenting 

 and semi-putrid articles of food, teeming with lower 

 organisms, are constantly eaten with impunity by the 

 lower animals, and are in many instances sought after 

 by man nay, such articles of diet are occasionally 

 administered with the view of curing rather than with 

 the prospect of causing disease 1 . We can only con- 

 clude, therefore, that in c the blood,' in c flacherie/ and 

 other similar affections, the contagious element acts as 

 a mere dead ferment might do in inciting blood- 

 changes; and that the organisms which are subse- 

 quently found in the infected animal are, for the most 

 part, the products of a new birth which has taken place 

 in the altered fluids 2 . 



1 Take the case of ' Kousso,' for instance, which is lauded by some as 

 an excellent remedy for Phthisis. See also Appendix E, p. cxxiv. 



2 Other instances of a similar nature are known. Thus, it has been 

 ascertained by M. Vulpian ('Archives de Physiologic,' vol. i. 1868), 

 that the insertion of a small portion of cyclamen-root beneath the skin 

 of frogs produces local irritation and a putrefactive process, which, after 



