INFLUENCES AND EFFECTS. 213 
merate all these diseases, with which medical men are familiar, 
but simply to indicate a few. There is favus or scall-head, 
called also “porrigo,’’ which has its primary seat in the hair 
follicles. Plica polonica, which is endemic in Russia, is almost 
cosmopolitan. Then there is Tinca tonsurans, Alopecia, 
Sycosis, &c., and in India a more decply-seated disease, the 
Madura Foot, has been traced to the ravages of a fungus 
described under the name of Chionyphe Carleri.* It is probable 
that the application of different names to the very often im- 
perfect forms of fungi which are associated with different 
diseases is not scientifically tenable. Perhaps one or two 
common moulds, such as Aspergillus or Penicillium, lie at the 
base of the majority, but this is of little importance here, and 
does not affect the general principle that some skin diseases are 
due to fungi. 
Whilst admitting that there are such diseases, it must be 
understood that diseases have been attributed to fungi as a 
primary cause, when the evidence does not warrant such a 
conclusion. Diphtheria and thrush have been referred to the 
devastations of fungi, whereas diphtheria certainly may and 
does occur without any trace of fungi. Fevers may some- 
times be accompanied by fungoid bodies in the evacuations, 
but it is very difficult to determine them. The whole 
question of epidemic diseases being caused by the presence 
of fungi seems based on most incomplete evidence. Dr. 
Salisbury was of opinion that camp measles was produced by 
Puccinia graminis, the pseudospores of which germinated in 
the damp straw, disseminated the resultant secondary bodies in 
the air, and caused the disease. This has never been verified. 
Measles, too, has been attributed freely, as well as scarlatina,t 
to fungal influences, and the endeavours to implicate fungi in 
being the cause of cholera have been pertinaciously persevered 
in with no conviction. The presence of certain cysts, said to 
be those of Urocystis, dcrived from rice, was announced by Dr. 
« Berkeley, in ‘Intellectual Obsorver,” Nov., 1862. ‘‘Mycetoma,” H. 
Vandyke Carter, 1874, 
+ Hallier and Zurn, “Zeitschrift fir Parasitenkunde.” Jena, 1869-71. 
