418 
M. TR0UES8 ART. 
mange met with the same opposition: where is the physician who 
doubts, to-day, that Sarcoptis Scabiei is the only cause of it ? A 
little later, towards the middle of the century, when the peculiar 
microphytes of certain diseases of the skin were discovered, no 
one was willing to believe in them; yet there are, to-day, but few 
men who will not admit that they are the only cause of these dis¬ 
eases. 
And again, when one sees, in anthrax, the circulatory current 
and all the organs tilled with the bacteridies (.Bacillus Anthracis ) 
is it right to deny that this disease is essentially parasitic? These 
bacteridies are living beings, which grow, reproduce themselves, 
and increase with great activity. Can it then be questioned that 
their presence is an immediate danger, especially now that it is 
known that at the very expense of the material of the organism 
itself they form a violent poison (ptomaine) which penetrates 
where the bacteridie does not ? Will it be said that here again 
bacteridies are only “ epiphenomena,” that is, a “ complication ” 
without importance, and undeserving attention ? 
What has been said of anthrax may be said as well with refer¬ 
ence to all other diseases: diphtheria, variola, intermittent fever. 
And we are not afraid to say it, for even if our instruments were 
not sufficiently powerful to bring to our sight organisms as minute 
as the causes and breeders of disease, we should be compelled by 
the deductions of reason alone to admit their existence, knowing 
what we do of the nature and spread of contagious diseases. He 
who talks of contagium talks of microbe, and it is the simplicity of 
this theory, after all, that gives it its great value and authorizes 
and compels us to consider it as the true expression of reality. 
What matters it whether the discussion is on the question 
whether the microbe is the contagium itself, or is only the carrier 
of it ? Whether it acts by itself, or only by the ptomaines it 
produces ; whether there is a specific microbe for each species 
of disease, or whether this microbe is susceptible of transforma¬ 
tion, like any other living being, according to the nature of the 
medium in which it lives ? All these questions are secondary, 
and may wait to be solved at a later period, but at the present 
time have nothing to do with the essentials of the parasitic theory. 
