MICROBES AND CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 
357 
eases. Bioplasts are very small particles of the living matter of 
the species infested by disease. Contagium is a bioplasm, and 
“each species of contagious bioplasm manifests its specific and 
proper action, and that one only.” We leave it to others who 
care to do so, to admire, and are able to appreciate this jargon 
scientific, which seems to carry us several centuries back; but we 
may remark that it somewhat resembles another theory, more 
serious and more complete, which we will now consider. 
The theory of the microzymas of Mr. Bechamp. —In this it is 
not a liquid blastema which is modified in the diseases, but an 
organized and solid blastema, comparable to blood and constituted 
of very small particles of living matters, which are the microzy¬ 
mas. These are those elementary granulations which are seen 
under the microscope in cells, and in all the liquids of the 
economy; it is these, and not the cells, in which they are en¬ 
cysted, which are the true agents of all the functions of the 
organism. It is by secreting a liquid called zymosis, or ferment, 
which continuously surrounds them, forming, with them, that 
whole called protoplasm, that these microzymas undergo the vari¬ 
ous changes, the end of which is the nutrition of the organism. 
It is not parasites from outside which produce virulent and con¬ 
tagious diseases, but the microzymas themselves, by a perversion 
of their normal function. They then secreteja bad zymasis, and 
are transformed into baeterias and microccocci, which are wrongly 
taken for foreign bodies, when they are only the result of a 
peculiar evolution of the microzymas already existing in our 
tissues. 
But that is not all; these microzymas do not die. In our 
organs cells die, aud are renewed; but the microzymas which 
they contain only unite to others and form new cells. After 
death, it is these which, by their transformation into microbes, 
produce putrid fermentation, and their existence lasts far beyond 
that of the organism to which. they temporarily belong. Thus 
the microzymas of chalk, which no doubt arise from the tissues 
of animals and plants at the time of its formation, after a rest of 
several thousand centuries, are still living and susceptible of 
transformation into bacteria, when a proper nutritive liquid is 
