PART i.j Partial Death Affecting Fluids and Tissues During Life. 165 



Moreover, other evidence is in existence directly opposed to the necessary agency 

 of vegetable organisms or, more correctly, of living matter of any kind, as the 

 effective agent in the production of diseases of this nature ; for Strieker * and 

 Panum f find that boiling does not aftect the virus of septicaemia, whilst Davaine 

 states that neither boiling nor rapid desiccation affect that of Charhon.^ Our own 

 observations on this particular point will be found narrated further on (pages 175, 

 176, 182). 



There is one point in regard to this question which appears to be worthy of 

 more attention than it has as yet generally met with, and this is, that in very 

 many of the diseases to which a vegetable origin is assigned, the blood affords 

 evidence of considerable leucocytosis. Now, in as far as our observations go, such 

 a process is incompatible with the simultaneous development of bacteria in the 

 same specimen of blood ; we have, indeed, on a former occasion, whilst referring to a similar 

 subject, expressed the opinion that " the numbers present appeared to bear an inverse ratio 

 to the number and activity of the bioplasts. § " Bacteria on being introduced into the 

 circulation rapidly disappear from the blood unless death ensues, and all the phenomena 

 appear to indicate that, so long as the leucocytes are in a state of activity, the former are 

 worsted in the struggle for existence. Only when the activity and multiplication of the 

 leucocytes cease, and coincident with the occurrence of disintegrative changes in their sub- 

 stance, do bacterial elements begin to appear and multiply. At this time, however, their 

 development may be very rapid, and appear more rapid than it really is, owing to 

 the difficulty of distinguishing between the granular debris — the " granulations mole- 

 culaires " — of the leucocytes, and the elements of the independent organisms. A 

 process in which living leucocytes are attacked and destroyed by bacteria has, how- 

 ever, in so far as we know, not yet been observed, far less has one in which the 

 presence of bacteria first induces leucocytosis and then destroys the resulting cells. 



Most of the diseases which have been ascribed to bacterial agency are very severe 

 and frequently fatal in their nature, and herein a possible source of fallacy is involved. 

 In cases in which a fatal termination is rapidly impending, partial death affecting the 

 elements of fluids and tissues to a greater or less degree may precede general death 

 of the organism — the sum of the deaths of its constituent elements — and in such 

 cases changes usually observed after the death of the organism,^ may take place in 

 such fluids and tissues ; so that, even in cases in which bacteria are found in the blood 

 or other fluids ante-morterti, they may merely be the results of the advanced degree of 

 the diseased condition, not the causes of its development. 



This may probably be the explanation of the phenomena observed in inflammatory 

 fluids and in the blood in cases, such as those already more than once referred to, in 



* The Medical Times and Gazette, Vol. I, 1873, p. 62. 



t Virchow's Archiv, 1862. 



% Comptes Rendus, T. LVIJ, page .351, August 10th, 1863. 



§ Appendix C, page 197, Eighth Annual Report of Sanitaiy Commissioner, 1872. 



