AND MEDICAL SCIENCE 331 



the International Medical Congress held in London in 1881 : 

 " Although it is impossible not to recognise the specific modes of 

 activity of microorganisms in the production of infective diseases, 

 we need not on that account deny that there is a certain unity 

 in all these microorganisms. I am of opinion that this unity is 

 founded upon the processes of putrefaction, and that the specific 

 modes of activity must be regarded as depending upon certain 

 alterations in the putrefactive process." It cannot be said that 

 the vast mass of subsequent investigations have displaced such a 

 view, seeing that no less an authority than Prof. Hueppe, of Prague, 

 in his first " Harben Lecture," recently dehvered in this city, is 

 reported to have said existing evidence favoured the view that the 

 origin of all common infectious diseases was " phylogenetically 

 traceable to putrefactive processes." ' 



Let us then strive to ascertain the conditions of origin of all 

 contagious affections. The more contagious they are, the more 

 important does the quest become. Let us not blindly think that 

 contagion is the one and only cause, but seek in all doubtful and 

 obscure cases, and by cumulation of evidence, to ascertain what 

 are the invariable and immediately antecedent sets of conditions, 

 or states of system, that may have sufficed to engender this or 

 that contagious disease. Progress, however slow, may in this 

 way ultimately reward our efforts, and we may gradually attain a 

 knowledge that will confer great power in checking the ravages of 

 these pestilential affections — a power to which we shall never 

 attain so long as we pin our faith exclusively to the narrower 

 ultra-contagionist doctrines now so prevalent. 



' " The Lancet," Oct. 31, 1903, p. 1217. 



