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neighbourhood for good. I have always believed that in this instance the thatch was the medium in which the poison was retained.

The mode in which scarlet fever poison is received by the infected subject is, I think, unquestionably by the lungs. When in the year 1850 I contracted the disorder myself, I was conscious of the exact time, source, and place of the infection. I was called to a child in the Church Row in Barnes, who was stricken with the malady. It was one of the first cases I had visited in that epidemic. Knowing that I had once suffered from the malady, and having often attended other cases without experiencing any ill effects, I was quite sure of being safe, and therefore ran unlawful risks. The breathing of the child being hurried, and the alæ nasi working, I put my ear over the chest, without the stethoscope, a linen handkerchief alone intervening. I was conscious at the time of an odour from the patient, and of his warm breath playing on my face. I left the house; but I was soon apprised of derangement: I felt nauseated and chilly. I met Dr. Willis in his carriage on Barnes Terrace, and got him to take me home, telling him I was poisoned with the disease. If I had taken a dose of arsenic, the symptoms could not have been induced more methodically or inevitably; and it not a little relieved the anxiety which they brought me, to watch them in their course. The disease was very severe, but was followed by no serious consequences. The urine was never albuminous; but, if I am not mistaken, it is as rare for

the urine to be albuminous in adults after scarlet fever, as it is common in children.

In this example, the rapidity of the symptoms after the absorption of the poison gave direct evidence that the poison was taken in by respiration; for there was no abraded surface of skin for absorption, nor was any fluid imbibed between the period of exposure and the appearance of the symptoms. Moreover, I was conscious at the time of infection of the inhalation of a noxious air.

From what part of the body of the patient the poison comes, I am unable to decide; nor can I see any rational and easy method of experiment by which to arrive at a solution of the problem. Some inquiries made long since by one or two observers, as to the possibility of producing the disease by inoculation of the blood of the infected, would indicate, if anything at all, that there was no specific poison in the blood; while the probabilities are strongly in favour of the supposition that the poison is an excrete from the skin or bronchial mucous membrane. Whence, for example, in my own case, could I have received the poisonous agent, except from the breath or the skin of the patient? Yet it is to be observed, that it cannot be as gaseous matter that the poison escapes; for, if the poison were volatile, it would not remain in the clothing near to the body; or, inhaled by the recipient, it would not act in the same gradual way that it does; but, like all the volatile series, would produce an immediate impression, causing either rapid death or a state closely approaching death, but temporary

in its duration. All facts considered, I should be led to judge that the poison is thrown off with the epithelium or epidermis; or that it is itself simply epithelial or epidermic cells in a modified, i. e., abnormal condition.

The mode of action of this poison in producing its effects on the economy is another point of deep interest. The consideration of this subject brings before us the whole question of zymosis, or animal fermentation. I have striven with considerable labour to understand the nature of this zymosis; and while the evidence is to my mind overwhelming in favour of the supposition, that on the entrance of certain organic products into the blood there is set up a change which gives rise to the symptoms, I am led to differ from other experimental authors as to the mode in which the process is conducted. The common assumption is that the organic poisons on their introduction into the blood undergo direct propagation and increase, and that upon their development and presence the specific symptoms of the disorder depend. Against this view I urge, that there is no evidence of the presence of anything approaching to a sporule, or cell, or organic germ, in the blood in any of the epidemic diseases: that many organic poisons, as the poison of the cobra, produce their effects too rapidly for the accomplishment of any organic cell-production: that fermentation out of the body is not necessarily connected with the formation of sporules or cells, but that these are accidentally derived: that if in the blood

there were constantly being formed these organic germs on the introduction of a single germ, there would never be recovery from a disease caused by such introduction, inasmuch as the development of new germs would continue so long as the body could supply, through the respiration and the circulation, the means of nourishment for the new growths: lastly, that the symptoms of the epidemic diseases can in many cases be closely imitated by the action of certain inorganic poisons with which we are well familiar. In the presence of these arguments, I for one am bound to throw aside the hypothesis of zymosis, whenever by that term is implied the idea of the production of specific cell-germs in the blood, or a dependence of symptoms on the presence of these assumed new developments. But on a simple chemical reading of zymosis, the theory may be accepted by the most sceptical, because it then becomes rational, and by analogy demonstrable, in its character. Let us thus consider the subject in its simplest positions.

Out of the body, the process of fermentation is excited when an albuminous product is brought into contact with bodies of the amylaceous or saccharine class; or, to formularise the production of the process after Liebig," whenever decomposing albuminous substances are brought into contact with ternary compounds, such as sugar." The nature of the process seems to lie in the circumstance that the presence of the albuminous body gives to the oxygen the power to combine with the previously passive

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elements of the ternary body. Thus, in alcoholic fermentation the sugar is transformed, if the decomposition be complete, into water, carbonic acid, and alcohol: while in the course of this process sporules or cells of the yeast-fungus are presented, the amount of these bearing proportion to the quantities of carbonic acid and of alcohol produced. But it is to be observed further, that this process may be modified, and that there may result lactic lieu of alcohol-acid fermentation.

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In the living body the zymotic process never, in so far as we know, passes to the point of the production of alcohol or of yeast sporule. For although the possibility of a blood fermentation yielding these products has been suggested, no demonstrative fact has been adduced, up to this time, in corroboration of the hypothesis.

But, as I have already tried to point out, in a paper on Zymosis published in the last volume of the Transactions of the Epidemiological Society, it is possible, and in some instances is demonstrable, that the development of acid bodies may occur in the human economy under zymotic influences. Some later researches lead me to doubt, however, whether the mode by which these products are produced, is described in that paper with the correctness I would wish at this time to supply. In constructing that paper, I was led by the common opinion to assume, that the transmissible poisons of the epidemic disorders act by setting up zymosis in the body as a new process. My more recent labours lead me to opine that, instead of zymosis being a process foreign

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