248 Progress of Rational Pathology. 



from a distance (i. e. by the air of a room filled with patients) 

 is more common than from actual transference of the secretion ; 

 it is most frequent when the disease is violent and at its 

 greatest height. Pieringer, in order to cure pannus, made 

 many attempts to produce blennorrhea by inoculation, and 

 arrived at the following results. The contagion is fixed, 

 its vehicle the mucus-like secretion of the conjunctiva : it 

 is only in the second and third degrees of the disease that the 

 mucus is positively infectious; as the secretion gets thinner, 

 so does its infectiousness diminish : eyes already diseased are 

 infected less easily than sound ones : the virus of the mucus 

 is not preserved for more than three days after its removal 

 from the body. The re-action from its introduction comes 

 on in from six to twenty-four hours. The application of ice 

 and the washing out the eye within three minutes after the 

 introduction of the matter, protects against its action. Decon- 

 de, who says he has always produced in animals ophthalmia 

 by introducing the matter of gonorrhoea, thinks that by injec- 

 tions of argent, nitr. into the urethra, the discharge immedi- 

 ately loses its contagious power. In like manner a solution 

 of chloride of lime is stated to destroy the infectious power of 

 the gonorrhceal secretion and of the mucus of contagious 

 ophthalmia, but only if it be well mixed up with the secre- 

 tion, or dropped in a few minutes after its introduction into 

 the eye, not if it be dropped in before it. 



h. Tinea. — In this disease, we need no longer talk of pus- 

 tules, and least of all of pustules filled with matter, for the 

 scabs are formed simply by the growth of fungi. Schonlein, 

 Langenbeck and Fuchs discovered fungi in several species 

 of favus and of alphus : Gruby has given a good account 

 of these fungi, whose seat is the tissue of the epidermis. 

 There is no doubt of the contagiousness of tinea, yet several 

 unsuccessful attempts have been made to propagate it by 

 inoculation of the fungi. 



