Proceedings of the Polytechnic Association. 1025 



If in this case the "ague pa'lmella" was co-existing with another 

 material, how does lie know that this other material was not the 

 cause ? When the " ague palmella " can be aj^plied by itself and the 

 disease supervenes, then the proof is complete. 



AVe are prevented from adopting this theory, without question, by 

 several considerations. It is not to be supposed the spores or germs 

 produce disease as such, but as growing, living animals or plants. 

 Is it witliin the range of possibility that these germs can be devel- 

 o|3ed, and the beings grow in the space of a few minutes or even 

 hours ? In our own case, in one hour the disease produced by the 

 malaria was upon us. The Black Hole of Calcutta, with^ which you 

 are all acquainted, aifords a striking example of the rapidity of the 

 operation of malaria in a concentrated form. There were 1-16 per- 

 sons placed in a small room. They perspired profusely, we are told, 

 tJms loading the atmosphere with moisture. The temperature was 

 very high. They were incarcerated at eight oVlock p. m. ; at eleven 

 o'clock one-half were dead. At six o'clock a. m., when they were 

 taken out, only twenty-three were living, and these in a state of 

 putrid fever, a zymotic fever. Is it possible to suppose that these- 

 results were produced by germs ? They are the same results that 

 malaria produces, modified by circumstances. By historians, the 

 result is assigned to carbonic acid, which I need not say is wholly 

 inadmissible?. The only reason that can be rationally assigned is 

 the putrefying effects of their bodily emanations. In the Pontine 

 marshes, it is not uncommon for healthy men to be struck down in a^ 

 few minutes and be dead in. a few hours. In the island of Antigua, 

 British soldiers, when on duty at the level of the sea at night, are 

 often attacked in a few minutes after exposure, and become perfectly 

 delirious and helpless in one hour and are dead in thirty hours. 

 We consider these cases utterly inexplicable on the germ theory. 

 Again, from all we know of parasitic life, the parasite lives by 

 exhausting the vital fluids of the being on which it lives or wound- 

 ing the animal, which is a comparatively slow process. It is gener- 

 ally the case that parasites inevitably kill the object that bears them. 

 If these germs grow and reproduce in the system, is it supposable 

 that they spontaneously become extinct ; yet eases of chills and fever 

 and typhoid fever are often removed by no medicine, but by simply 

 sustaining the system and a removal to an unmalarious atmosphere. 

 When the microscopic fungus attacks the under surface of the potato 



[Inst.] 65 



