140 The Mieroseopie Germ Theory of Disease. By H. C. Bastian, 
them in their respective fluids may be such as to lead to the forma- 
tion of a continuous new birth of independent organisms, all of 
which exhibit most active powers of multiplication. The organisms 
produced in such cases are therefore only to an infinitesimal 
extent lineal descendants of the original living ferments or contagia 
under whose influence such fermentative or zymotic processes were 
originally established.* 
Thus it would appear that the original notion borrowed from 
the vital theory of fermentation, that all the organisms met with 
in a fermenting mixture are in the strict sense of the term lineal 
descendants of those originally introduced as ferments, would dis- 
appear with the vital theory itself. Yet this has been the notion 
upon which upholders of the germ theory of disease have always 
relied so confidently in explanation of the mode of increase of con- 
tagium within the body. 
Looking, however, at this question from our new point of view, 
may we not say that chemical changes established in some one 
tissue, or in many, may, by dint of altered blood and other secondary 
processes, spread so as to be initiated also in previously sound parts ; 
and that thus throughout the body, or in some special regions of 
it, Hving tissue endowed with peculiar and poisonous properties, 
or complex alkaloidal compounds, may be engendered in enormous 
quantities, some of which may be thrown off from this or that 
surface, and act after the fashion of " contagia " generally ? 
* 'Beginnings of Life,' vol. ii, p. 361. 
