398 POISONS, CONTAGIONS, MIASMS. 



same time yield alcohol and carbonic acid as excre- 

 mentitious matters.* 



It would perhaps appear wonderful if bodies, pos- 

 sessing a crystalline structure and geometrical figure, 

 were formed during the processes of fermentation 

 and putrefaction from the organic substances and 

 tissues of organs. We know, on the contrary, that 

 the complete dissolution into organic compounds is 

 preceded by a series of transformations, in which 

 the organic structures gradually resign their forms. 



Blood, in a state of decomposition may appear to 

 the eye unchanged; and when we recognise the 

 globules of blood in a liquid contagious matter, the 

 utmost that we can thence infer is, that those glob- 

 ules have taken no part in the process of decompo- 

 sition. All the phosphate of lime may be removed 

 from bones, leaving them transparent and flexible 

 like leather, without the form of the bones being in 

 the smallest degree lost. Again, bones may be 

 burned until they be quite white, and consist merely 

 of a skeleton of phosphate of lime, but they will still 

 possess their original form. In the same way pro- 

 cesses of decomposition in the blood may aflect in- 

 dividual constituents only of that fluid, which will 

 become destroyed and disappear, whilst its other 

 parts will maintain the original form. 



Several kinds of contagion are propagated through 

 the air : so that, according to the view already 

 mentioned, we must ascribe life to a gas, that is, to 

 an aeriform body. 



All the supposed proofs of the vitality of con- 

 tagions are merely ideas and figurative representa- 

 tions, fitted to render the phenomena more easy of 

 apprehension by our senses, without explaining them 

 These figurative expressions, with which we are so 

 willingly and easily satisfied in all sciences, are the 

 foes of all inquiries into the mysteries of nature ; they 

 are like the/ato morgana, which show us deceitful 



* Annalen der Pharmacie, Band xxix. S. 93 und 100. 



