90 



DR. BASTIAN ON THE 



with its fundamental position denied by other leading germ- 

 theorists, it would, even had it been securely founded, be quite 

 inadequate to meet the necessities of their position. A special 

 zymotic disease, which had arisen in the manner above indicated, 

 would assuredly have had what is termed a de novo origin — it 

 would have started from no specific cause, and would never have 

 developed, but for the existence of those " determining conditions" 

 which brought about the altered state of health and tissues. This 

 group of conditions would therefore constitute the cause of the 

 disease ; and inasmuch as, by the hypothesis we are now consider- 

 ing, the common germs are held to be ever present and unavoid- 

 able, any changes or developments which they might take on 

 could only be studied in the same rank and side by side with 

 those of the other tissue-elements — that is, as consequences or 

 phenomena of the disease. 



(2) It was originally affirmed by Prof. Burdon Sanderson*, 

 and it has of late been distinctly reasserted by M. Pasteurf, that 

 the blood and internal tissues of healthy animals and of man are 

 entirely free from ferment- organisms or their germs. Some have 

 sought to modify this view, on the strength of certain experi- 

 ments which are so extremely inconclusive as to make it almost 

 puerile to have brought them forward J. 



For, however strong the evidence is that living units may, on 

 certain occasions, be even proved experimentally to appear in fluids 

 in which no living matter previously existed (archebiosis), it is 

 even stronger to show that, under certain conditions, similar low, 

 independent forms of life may originate in the midst of living 

 tissues previously free from them, by a kind of transformation 



* Thirteenth Eeport of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. 



t Comptes Rendus, April 30, 1877, p. 900. 



I Cutting out portions of the internal organs of recently killed animals, en- 

 veloping them with superheated paraffine, and then placing them in an incuba- 

 tor at a suitable temperature to see whether germs and organisms will appear, 

 would, even if taken alone, obviously permit no certain conclusion to be drawn 

 from their appearance. But the evidence relied upon by Sanderson and Pasteur 

 tends as strongly to show that they are not developments of preexisting germs, 

 as certain other evidence subsequently to be mentioned tends to show that they 

 are heterogenetic products (Trans, of Path. Soc. 1875, p. 267). Yet, following a 

 now long-established custom of ignoring the possibility of the heterogenetic 

 origin of Bacteria, the results of such experiments are by some supposed to de- 

 monstrate the existence of latent germs in an organ like the spleen, for instance, 

 which is wholly cut off from outside communication — and even when the blood 

 itself is declared to be germless. 



