51G 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[December 2S, 1872. 
destroy they did not know what. lie believed that 
plenty of soap and water and pure air were the best 
disinfectants. When small-pox appeared in the hos- 
pital under his care, he placed over the doors of the 
ward a curtain steeped in a solution of chloride of 
lime. He did not know that it did any harm, and he 
doubted whether it did any good; but he had great 
faith in fresh air and in cleanliness. The fact that these 
epidemics come suddenly, rise gradually to a maximum, 
and then decline was an argument against the germ 
theory. If that theory were true would not the epi¬ 
demic continue to spread more extensively the greater 
the number of people suffering from the disease, and, 
therefore, tne greater the likelihood of its bohm com¬ 
municated to others ? 
Dr. Lyons rose to say a few words, rather to avoid 
being taken as concurring with many of the statements 
that had fallen from Dr. Cameron than as thinking they 
could enter profitably on the present occasion into a dis¬ 
cussion of the many points he had raised. The basis of 
his paper seemed to be an assumption that the germs 
for the introduction of disease were different for 
different diseases, and that in the next place, those germs 
or microzymes had some close affinity, or relation to, if 
they were not identical with bacteria, vibriones, etc. 
He (Dr. Lyons) could not be taken as concurring in the 
idea that minute microscopic animalcules or vegetations 
were the germs or origin of any but a few and well- 
defined forms of cutaneous disease. He thought they 
were travelling in an entirely wrong direction in looking 
for the origin of epidemic, disease in that quarter. He 
had. himself an idea that diseased processes, however 
"vaiiiiLle in their superficial manifestations, were, when 
viewed from a profound pathological point of view, 
moic nearly allied, and much more closely similar in 
their essential conditions, than would be supposed from 
a superficial view of them. He had in his own mind the 
elements of a theory of disease, of which he was not yet 
prepared to produce the proofs in all their details, the 
piinciple of wdiich was the unity of all diseased action 
in the body: that whereas, for instance, in cases of 
cerebro-spinal meningitis there was an especial manifes¬ 
tation of nervous power of one kind, there were other 
forms of disease, in which the activity of the nervous 
system was brought into play in a different manner 
causing one class of eruption on the skin in one epi¬ 
demic, and another kind of eruption in another epidemic. 
But that was a subject of too wide a range to be followed 
upon that occasion. He did not think Dr. Cameron had 
undertaken to say that the use of gaseous disinfectants 
would not to some extent destroy the supposed germ of 
disease, admitting, for argument’s sake, that such germs 
did exist. What his paper had shown, as far as it had 
shown anything*, was that by the use of very lar^e 
quantities, and especially by potent solutions, of certain 
powerful agents, we could destroy the vitality of bac¬ 
teria, or prevent their development. He (Dr. Lyons) 
foi one was not prepared to admit that all diseases were 
propagated by contagion, that like generated like in 
disease, or that contagion would explain the develop¬ 
ment of all epidemic diseases. He doubted if, in the 
present condition of knowledge, any two persons in that 
room would agree as to what was, and what was not 
contagion, or what was to be accepted as the element of 
contagion in any given case, or, if admitted, how its 
action was to be explained. He might observe that he 
thought they were all too hard on the corporation of 
Dublin. How could that body undertake for the disin¬ 
fection of a large city, to employ the thousands of tons 
of disinfecting agents which would be necessary on the 
basis of Dr. Cameron's calculation P In his opinion they 
were a long way of! yet from having ascertained the 
true origin of any of the principal forms of epidemic 
diseases. His view was that they followed a certain 
course of development in cycles, and were to be ex¬ 
plained by the destruction of a certain portion of ner¬ 
vous energy in the individual and in the population, and 
not so much as was ordinarily supposed by any form of 
contagion, in the sense in which that word 'had been 
hitherto employed so vaguely and so unscientifically. 
The Chairman (Dr. Aquila Smith) thought Dr. 
Cameron had, to a great extent, established the object 
he had in view with respect to the action of disinfectants. 
He had shown that it required a much higher degree of 
concentration to destroy animalcules than had been 
heretofore considered necessary. He thought until they 
had something more tangible than they had as yet, they 
were not able to say that disease wa3 propagated by 
germs, and that the study of the natural history of 
epidemics would throw more light on the subject The 
Metropolitan Sanitary Board of London requested 
returns to be made from all the vestries who employed 
people in cleaning the sewers, of the number of persons 
employed in that way, the age of those persons, the dura¬ 
tion of their employment, and the cases of fever amongst 
them. 234 individuals were included in the returns. A 
great many of them had been engaged 17 years in that 
occupation, and the whole sum of the cases of fever 
amongst them was six. That struck him as a very 
remarkable event. 
Dr. Cameron, in reply, said that all he could find in 
Dr. Grimshaw’s remarks was that there was a something* 
in contagion which heat destroyed. If that something 
were any of those abnormal conditions of the air, or loss 
of nervous energy, of which they had heard, he did not 
see how an increase of temperature or whitewashing 
could destroy it. There was a something which was 
capable of communicating disease from one individual to 
another; for there could be no doubt there was contagious 
matter in small-pox pustules, in farcy in the horse,, in 
pleuro-pneumonia in the ox, and in vaccine, and we 
could produce any of those diseases by introducing a 
certain kind of morbid matter into the blood of an 
animal. This palpable matter could be reduced in an 
almost infinitesimal degree, and yet be capable of con¬ 
veying disease. Any one who read Chauveau’s 
experiments would see he clearly proved there were 
living particles in vaccine, and in the matter from sheep 
and ox pustules; if they were taken out of the fluid, it 
became non-contagious; but if left in it, it remained con¬ 
tagious. What could be a greater proof of the germ 
theory F Dr. Darby stated that lice assumed an 
epidemic form. Did not that go far to prove the germ 
theory ? Surely Dr. Darby did not mean to say that 
where lice and' itch became epidemic diseases, there 
was an actual creation of lice and acari ? If he did not 
go to that extent, he must admit that those diseases- 
could only be propagated from individual to individual. 
With regard to these diseases, they might be spread in a 
great many ways which appeared to be extraordinary 
and unaccountable; but when they carefully inquired 
into the mode by which the contagion was com¬ 
municated, they w r ere often able to penetrate the 
mystery. For example, the recent report of the Board 
of Health, in Victoria, gave an extraordinary instance- 
of the spread of small-pox oontagion by myriads of flies 
in a place where there was little or no communication 
with the districts in which the disease first appeared. It 
was found that the disease spread in the direction of tho 
flight of myriads of flies that had previously tormented 
small-pox patients, and which carried from them the 
contagious matter, whatever it might be. Dr. Lyons, ho 
knew*, w*as not a strong contagionist, but he misunder¬ 
stood one or two of his (Dr. Cameron’s) experiments. 
He did not mean to say chlorine would not do some 
service. All he w*anted to say w*as that unless used in 
very large quantities it did not destroy the lowest forms 
of life, and then he asked why did they use chlorine at 
all ? Every physician who used chlorine must have had 
some foregone conclusion as to its effect ? Surely it was- 
not to produce a change in nervous energy ; it must be 
to do some specific thing—that is to destroy contagion—- 
