Present and Prospective 199 



the uncertainties of things we do well to trust — 

 and we can have no surer trust — that vis medica- 

 irix Naturce by which, health being the normal 

 and stable, disease the accidental and passing, 

 condition, it comes to pass with the race through 

 generations, as with the individual in his brief life, 

 that the organic strain constantly is to rectify 

 deviations and bring disorder back to order ; so 

 keeping mankind in continuance, if not progress, 

 of being for its appointed time on earth ; for 

 a fond optimism expects not only the progress 

 but even the perfection of mankind before the 

 sun goes out. 



Here might arise a question whether in the 

 marriage union of disease-tendencies a new disease 

 is ever born. It is true that new diseases have 

 been discovered, but in such cases it is pretty 

 certain that the newness was in the discoveries 

 by exacter observation, not in the diseases. A 

 morbid species might perhaps be expected to be 

 as stable as an organic species in the surrounding 

 conditions of the human organism ; and although 

 new toxin-generating microbes are discovered it 

 does not follow that they have not always been at 

 secret work. Still it is quite conceivable that new 

 microbes may be formed by transformation of 

 such mean and simple organisms in the various 

 and changing conditions of their being, and that 

 intermediate morbid states between the classified 

 forms of disease, a pseudo this and a pseudo 

 that, may reflect outwardly inward microbial trans- 



