ARE CERTAIN EPIDEMIC DISEASES CAUSED BY INFUSORIA? 177 
of which I speak are endemic in the neighbourhood of accu¬ 
mulations of decomposing matter. 
My inquiries into the nature of the miasmata which are 
given off by the healthy human body, and which give rise 
to typhus and hospital gangrene, show that they proceed also 
from matter in a state of putrid fermentation. All those 
diseases, therefore, have a common cause,— pidrefying matter. 
When the symptoms observed in those diseases are carefully 
analysed, it is found that this common cause produces common 
effects and identical anatomical lesions. For instance, bubos, 
anthrax, moist gangrene, petechiae, gastro-intestinal and 
other symptoms, observed in persons attacked by plague, 
exist also in typhus, grave typhoid fever, yellow fever, and the 
dy sentery of hot climates. I may add that some great physi¬ 
cians, perceiving a marked affinity between these diseases, 
have confounded them under the generic names of plague, 
pestilential, malignant, putrid, or typhus fevers. The great 
importance of the comparison I have made will be seen from 
those facts and others that I could bring forward. 
Now remembering the medical axiom,— Certain symptoms 
may vary, without changing the species of the disease, I am led 
to establish identity of species in those diseases which will, I 
hope, soon be styled Parasitic. Putrefying solid or liquid 
food, when introduced into the digestive canal of a healthy 
man, or of a lower animal, causes the symptoms observed in 
those diseases. These results have been obtained in numerous 
and varied experiments made upon healthy animals with 
putrefying matters (emanations, inoculations, injection into 
the veins or into the digestive canal). Grave symptoms or 
death have been the result. Since I have proved that the 
gases and vapours proceeding from fermenting matter bear 
with them in large quantity spores and the reproductive 
bodies of microzoa, all these results can be easily explained, 
since, through the respiratory passages, as well as by the 
means I have just pointed out, infusoria penetrate into 
the organism, either as fully-developed or as reproductive 
bodies. 
It is now admitted that in cases of typhus, smallpox, sang 
de rate, anthrax, moist gangrene, and malignant pustule, 
Bacteria and Vibriones exist in the blood. These same ani¬ 
malcules, as well as Monads and Cercomonas, are found also 
in the foeces of patients suffering from typhus, cholera, 
and dysentery. Some distinguished micrographists have 
proved this also. 
These facts are of the highest importance, since I shall 
prove, subsequently, that not only is the body in its normal 
