ANALYSIS OF CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 509 
The diverse types shall be chosen in such a manner as to 
represent all the forms of virulent maladies—from those 
with local or quasi-XocdX manifestations, as blennorrhagia and 
simple chancre, to those which implicate all the body, as 
glanders and syphilis, whose anatomical manifestations affect 
the majority of the organs. 
Determination of the proper agents to which the Virulent Faculty 
belongs . 
Given some virulent malady, what is there in it which 
renders it capable of being communicated to healthy indi¬ 
viduals? Every one knows that this faculty of transmission 
is owing to the fact that the diseased organism manufactures 
more or less considerable quantities of virus, which it gives 
off, mediately or immediately, to healthy organisms. Every¬ 
body also knows that, generally, a virus , the action of which 
on the latter gives rise to a disease identical with that which 
engendered itself, is multiplied in certain humours which con¬ 
stitute its vehicle. Many diverse substances enter into the 
composition of this vehicle. To find in this complex medium 
the elements which play the part of the virus ,—that is to say, 
the essential agents of contagion, the virulent or infecting 
principles—this is the fundamental subject which ought to 
be the object of our primary studies. If we contrive to 
determine very exactly these viruliferous elements we shall 
have made a considerable step in the theory of viruses. 
This determination even compels us to submit the virulent 
agents to all the procedure of the precise researches which 
have been introduced into the natural sciences. We may 
thus make a physiology of virus, as of any other element 
of the organism. May our means of study be sufficient, and 
enable us to bring this physiology to the desired degree of 
perfection, so that the theory of virulent maladies shall be 
established on the widest and most solid basis. 
(To be continued .) 
