"^Soumai^Snriff ^^^^^ Pathological Processes. " 25 
Enougli: the author of this pamphlet presumes that the 
audience whom he addresses are accomplished fungologists. This 
is really asking a little too much, seeing the confusion in which 
fungology is at present. Even at the scientific meeting at Frank- 
fort, in autumn, 1867, it was shown to be a very chaos. Never- 
theless, I have been patient, and worked my way through the 
doctrine with dictionaries, handbooks, and the usual aids of learning, 
but it is hardly necessary to go to that trouble. The experiment 
lapses entirely on one point, to which I draw your attention. When 
Hallier took out of his bottle a small quantity of matter, containing 
the " micrococcus " and " urocystis," and put them into his steamed 
apparatus, he had no security whatever that there were not thou- 
sands of other sporules contained in the mixture and passed into his 
apparatus. 
If I eat a piece of green Stilton cheese, I swallow millions of 
sporules. There are hundreds of things — for instance, sour milk, 
bread which has stood for some time, and meat which does not 
even smell — which are positively penetrated by fungi of various 
kinds. If you drink a glass of beer you swallow thousands of 
sporules of the particular kind which form the fermentum or the 
fungus cerevisias. Indeed all decomposing matters contain vast 
numbers of sporules of various fungi ; and therefore to presume 
that in that drop of matter which he put into the bottle, he had 
brought in nothing but the particular cells constituting the cholera 
fungus, is one of the most patent errors that a man could commit. 
The doctrine has not been wanting the support of warmed-up 
old fallacies. Hallier said that his fungus required a certain warm 
temperature, and that in the cold it did not grow. Hence he 
argued that it must come from a warm climate. Cholera comes 
from India. You see at a glance the vicious round of conclusions. 
The fact that " cholera comes from India " suggested the inquiry, 
" How does it come from India ? " There was an old hypothesis of 
an author of the name of Tytler, who in the year 1833 wrote a 
" sensation " book on the " Morbus oryzeus," or rice disease, alias 
cholera. In it he propounded that cholera was diffused by means 
of rice. There is nothing more absurd than the idea that a fungus 
could be introduced into the human body by rice, which can never 
be eaten except when boiled, and which is never either by man or 
animals put into the mouth except after being thoroughly cooked. 
Most absurd was this hypothesis, but it was nevertheless accepted 
for a time, and the cholera was called after it. This barren hypo- 
thesis of the year 1833 now in 1867 was made to serve as another 
support to this fungus theory : The fungus lives in rice, it is 
propagated in and by rice ; and I will show you how," said 
M. HaUier. He put earth into a flowerpot, sowed rice into it, 
and manured it with cholera excrement; and to his very great 
