AIR BENEATH THE MICROSCOPE. 
167 
went so far as to publish figures of these cells, which they 
alleged were absent from localities which had no cholera cases 
in their neighbourhood. Dr. Ransome, again, gives his testi- 
mony in favour of the view that the air we breathe contains 
numerous organisms. In a paper read before the Philosophical 
Society of Manchester, in the year 1870 (and reported in these 
pages), he stated that an examination of the air showed that 
in cases of diphtheria numerous greenish conferval filaments 
appeared ; and in the air collected from the neighbourhood 
of cases of measles, whooping-cough, and phthisis abundant 
examples of small round confer void cells were found. At the 
same meeting at which the above statement was made, Dr. H. 
Browne alleged that he had obtained nearly the same results. 
Beside these, there are several others on the same side. 
Signor Selmi, of Mantua, states that he has examined the mois- 
ture proceeding from the air of marshes, and found that it 
consisted in a considerable proportion of spores of algae and 
active infusoria. Again, another observer, Dr. Balestra, has 
made important observations on the air in the Pontine marshes 
of Rome ; and he states that there are in it the spores, of a 
greenish yellow colour and -- ^ - p mm. in diameter, of a minute 
species of algae, and that these, he has no doubt, are the cause 
of those numerous cases of intermittent fever which are almost 
characteristic of the locality. M. Reveil also shows that the 
air in the wards of the St. Louis Hospital was, when collected 
by the microscope, abundantly charged with epithelial cells 
and various organic corpuscles. Evidence in favour of this 
view is also given by M. V. Poulet, who states (“ Comptes 
Rendus,” vol. lxv.) that he has found abundant quantities of 
Bacterium termo , Monas termo , and B. bacillus , in the air 
which had been breathed by persons who were suffering from 
common whooping-cough. 
The annual Reports * from the Army Medical Department, 
too, give us a good deal of evidence ; and it is the more 
valuable, not from the fact of its leaning to one side more 
than another, as from the circumstance that the investigations 
recorded have been invariably conducted with that strict 
regard for truth which renders them valuable as impartial 
accounts. The statements vary a little, according to the 
observer that makes them, but some of them point distinctly 
to the fact that the air is decidedly impure from the nature of 
its contents. For instance, Dr. de Chaumont states that 120 
cubic feet of air were found to contain “ epithelium in large 
quantity, hair and various fibres, sand, soot, crystalline sub- 
* “ Sanitary and Medical Reports of the Army Medical Department 
for 1867.” 
