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THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



action of an unhealed organic 



fragment 



combines with 



weaker inherent tendencies to incite the fermentative pro- 



F 



cess. Fermentations may be associated with the presence 

 of organisms, or they may occur independently. The 

 ordinary zymotic diseases are comparable with fermenta- 

 tions of the latter class ^ ; and their several contagia act 

 after the fashion of the mere dead organic fragment upon 

 the fermentable fluid ^. 



^ It is, however, quite conceivable that, in certain cases, the changes 

 in the blood might, in the last stages of the disease, assume such a 

 character as to lead to the evolution of Bacteria in this fluid. Such a 

 change, which may occasionally occur during life, does undoubtedly 

 occur very soon after death, in some diseases. In two cases, one of 

 rheumatic fever and one of typhoid fever, in which the temperature 

 had gone up to 108-110° Fahr. a few hours before death, I found 

 the vessels of the brain and of other parts of the body containing 

 myriads of Bacteria even within forty hours after death, and whilst the 

 temperature of the air had not been over 65° Fahr, The blood was 

 blackish and fluid, the organs were much blood-stained, and, in addition 

 to other marks of putrefaction, bubbles of gas were abundant in the 

 meshes of the pia mater. The blood of such, and of other similar 

 patients examined during life, has never revealed to me the least trace 

 of Bacteria, Dr. Burdon Sanderson, moreover, has ascertained that the 

 blood and other fluids of the body do not generally exhibit any zymotic 

 tendencies (see 'Thirteenth Report of Medical Officer of Privy Council'). 

 Some of the Bacteria which were found after death, I believe to have 

 been evolved de novo, whilst others were descendants of those which had 

 so arisen in the putrescent blood. No other view seems to me to be so 

 tenable as this. The fluids in a pysemic abscess may occasionally be on 

 the road towards similar results, and, even if no Bacteria exist, such 

 fluids might exhibit 'zymotic' properties. 



2 Look, again, at the great moral epidemics which were so prevalent 

 m the middle ages, and which in their most marked form have extended 

 almost to our own times. Here, also, we have a changed mode of 

 action in certain parts of the body, brought about partly by ' predis- 

 posmg/ and partly by 'exciting' causes. We may read in Hecker 

 (* Epidemics of the Middle Ages,' p. 142) as follows :— ' In a Methodist 

 chapel m Redruth, a man, during divine service, cried out with a loud 

 voice, *' What shall I do to be saved " ? at the same time manifesting 

 the greatest uneasiness and solicitude respecting the condition of his 

 soul. Some other members of the congregation followed his example, 

 cried out in the same form of words, and seemed shortly after to suffer 

 the most excruciating bodily pain. This strange occurrence was soon 

 publicly known ; and hundreds of people who had come thither, either 

 attracted by curiosity or by a desire, from other motives, to see the 

 sufferers, fell into the same state. The chapel remained open for some 



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