50 The Farmer's Veterinary Adviser. 



Is it conceivable that in these many years of active life and 

 nutrition this same animal system has been unable to elab- 

 orate even a fraction of that particular food which was so 

 abundantly produced in the first short year or months of 

 its existence ? But this is not all. If the muscles or other 

 tissues of this animal, rendered insusceptible by a first attack 

 of a given disease, are boiled and made into a soup, it sup- 

 ports the life of the specific germ of that disease, and even 

 secures its rapid increase. It follows that there is no lack 

 of food in the living body for this germ which finds such a 

 fertile field in the soup made from its elements. 



i. The Antidote Theory. This supposes that some 

 chemical substance is produced during the progress of the 

 disease which is laid up in the living tissues of the animal 

 body, and acts as a direct poison to the germ. This, 

 adopted by Klebs and Klein, has, like the first-named 

 hypothesis, a basis in the action of ferments in simple 

 chemical solutions out of tlie animal bod^-. Bread that 

 has risen once or twice under the action of yeast is raised 

 less effectually on each successive occasion, though more 

 flour is added every time. So with many other ferments ; 

 their growth is rendered less active in proportion to the 

 accumulation of their own chemical products in the liquid 

 in which they are. But the germ is not killed by the ac- 

 cumulation of its chemical products ; it remains alive and 

 active so long as it finds food in its surroundings. Were it 

 otherwise, it is not conceivable that these chemical products 

 should remain in tlie tissues for years in a soluble condition, 

 in which alone they would be taken in by the germ, so as 

 to poison it. If entirely insoluble they might remain iu 

 the tissues indefinitely, like the particles of charcoal in the 

 tattooed skin, but they could not affect the composition of 

 the animal fluids nor hinder the growth of any germs 

 in these liquids. If, on the contrary, they were soluble in 

 these animal fluids, they would, like other dissolved pro- 



