358 
M. TR0UESSA.RT. 
given to them, as was demonstraed by M. Becliamp. 
This theory is undoubtedly attractive and explains many more 
facts than the preceding; but there are many others which do 
not agree with it, while the parasite theory explains them easily; 
such for instance, as the phenomena of cadaveric putrefaction, and 
the good effects of Lister’s dressing, or the closing of wounds of 
Mr. Guerin. 
Mr. Robin, in his theory of blastemas, admitted also that the 
cadaveric putrefaction was taking place without the introduction 
of any external agent. 
But it is known to-day, that cadavers protected from germs 
of the air become mummefied, without putrefying. Such also 
is the case with bodies that for centuries have been left in 
some of the underground vaults of some churches, and which 
without antiseptic preparation, have been slowly mummefied. 
Many of these underground places, where the air is dry and of 
an even temperature, present conditions essentially favorable to 
mumefaction, because of the fact that they are unfit for the life 
of low vegetable organism. 
The theory of the microzymas explains the transmission of 
diseases by the filtrated elements of viruses, when the filtrated 
liquid of that same virus is without danger. From this point of 
view it is more in accordance with the facts than the theory of 
blastema, but it does not explain the effects of the closing or the 
swifting of the air in the dressing of Mr. Guerin, nor those of 
phenic acid in the Lister dressing. Indeed, if the virulent microz¬ 
ymas are in the body of patients and do not come from outside, 
it is difficult to understand the use and advantages of those dress¬ 
ings. Evidently the swifting of the air, which arrests only its 
solid particles, and allows the air itself to go through, acts then 
only in arresting something which was in suspension in the atmos¬ 
phere, and that something is nothing else but the figured organ¬ 
isms or the germs of the air. 
(To be continued.) 
