1887. | MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 189 
in the progress of medicine. The idea of living germs, which penetrate the 
human organism, is not new. The speaker then sketched the rise of the bac- 
terial theory, and said it should have inspired observers with caution, but 
that instead of that micro-biology aspired to become itself pathology. 
It was a whirlwind, enveloping all, and at the side of precious discoveries 
like those of the bacillus of anthrax, of tuberculosis, and some others which 
are an honor to science, came forth from every part microscopical researches 
on the existence of new microbes in all diseases, and every sickness seemed 
to have found its germ, destined perhaps to die before being registered. One 
could scarcely open a paper without seeing the announcement of the discov- 
ery of one or more new pathogenic microbes. Pathology has come to be pro- 
claimed almost the same as bacteriology. Bacteriology has gone beyond its 
premises, and is an unworthy invasion in the field of evolution. The claims 
of Klebs to discriminate between a poisonous germ and a large family of non- 
poisonous germs seems unproven. In disease, when several microbes are 
present, we cannot discover which is the fatal one. Plants are edible in pro- 
portion to the cultivation and soil, not differing morphologically from their 
poisonous fellows, and if an analogous condition holds good with microbes, 
the reasoning of the bacteriological method is false. 
Who has seen diphtheria or malaria, or any other disease, in which it was 
proven that the disease depended upon the microbe? 
He did not see in modern methods of bacteriological research the true ex- 
perimental method. Diseases are produced by inoculation; but are these 
morbid processes dependent upon the germ or upon the soil ‘fa which it was 
implanted? Demonstration by this mend fails, and in the majority of cases 
common good sense pronounces against the attempted proof. 
The true part played by bacteria in pathology is the production by them 
of certain noxious elements in the blood, which substances, and not the bac- 
teria, are the potent factors in the causation of disease. The dictum of modern 
therapeutics is that remedies are given to destroy germs. The speaker then 
went on to refute this dictum, and closed by an eloquent appeal to American 
observers to follow closely the experimental method, since it was not only the 
method of science but of their government, and recalled to them Virchow’s 
remark that ‘ Science is unproductive when it has no national character.’ 
Among most of the essayists, however, the bacterial theory had a strong 
foothold. One speaker even presented the fourth and fifth cultures of a bac- 
terum from a uterine myoma. He did this modestly, however. Pasteur and his 
theories received a somewhat rough handling at the hands of Dr.Whitmarsh, 
of England, who called attention to errors in his processes and conclusions, 
and thought it by no means certain that rabies was due to the microbe to 
which it is assigned by Pasteur. He asserted that, in several cases, death 
has followed inoculations by Pasteur in which the symptoms clearly showed 
that death was due to the inoculations and not to rabies, and thought we were 
in danger of a new disease—Pasteurphobia. 
Dr. Domingo Freire, of Rio Janeiro, forwarded a paper, which was read 
by Dr. Le Mounier, of New Orleans, in which the author narrated his exper- 
iments on the inoculation of yellow fever. The microbe, he said, is an infin- 
itesimally small vegetable organism found in the blood as well as the secre- 
tions of yellow-fever patients. In the concluding portion of his paper the 
author gave his results. He claimed that vaccinations had been made dur- 
ing a severe epidemic of the disease, in the worst quarter of the city, among 
persons mostly foreigners, and therefore were susceptible to the disease, and 
living in a condition of almost inconceivable wretchedness. The results had 
been that, with almost no exceptions, those vaccinated had escaped the dis- 
ease, though exposed to it, while the unvaccinated died in great numbers. 
