SNAKE-POISON LITERATURE. 73 



" salts" observed by Mead were " animalcules," 

 on which the activity of the venom, as well as 

 other active poisons, depends. This looks like 

 something approximating to a belief in the 

 germ theory of disease. Fontana, of course, 

 flatly contradicts De Buffon and insists that 

 nothing of the kind exists, a fact of which he 

 satisfied himself by frequent and repeated ex- 

 periments. He appeals to posterity in the follow- 

 ing strong and forcible terms : — " How many are 

 there who judge after others ! We may include 

 in this number all those who are not capable 

 of immediately consulting nature ; who prefer 

 hypothesis to fact, and eloquence to truth; a 

 severe and candid posterity will, without doubt, 

 be astonished to find that there have been 

 philosophers and naturalists in the eighteenth Appeal to 

 century, who, even in the most important par- i'"^'*"*^- 

 ticulars, have ventured to substitute conjecture 

 to experiment, notwithstanding that the latter 

 would have been made with as much ease, as it 

 would have been decisive." Fontana, if alive, 

 would be grieved to find that the world has not 

 yet improved so much as he expected. What 

 was a grievance in his day is equally a disgrace 

 in the nineteenth century. 



