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THE NUMBER AND VALUE OF FACTS TO SUPPORT THE PROPOSITION.

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SECTION I.

ON REPRODUCTION.

It is inferred that the proposition, "the matter which operates in the production of Epidemic, Endemic, and Infectious Diseases, possesses the property of vitality," we proceed now to the enumeration of those facts which further elucidate this subject.

The facts must necessarily be such as illustrate the identity of properties in the imaginary germs, that are known to exist in demonstrable germs: we take therefore the law of reproduction to be to life, what the law of attraction is to gravitation.^[6]

But further; do those matters which engender disease furnish to our minds the properties inseparable from life in the abstract? Though the faculty of reproduction is essentially an evidence that the thing which reproduces its kind must be a living body, yet it is only a property or power of living beings and is not itself life, it therefore is necessary to establish the fact that the materies morbi not only has the power of reproduction, but also those properties which in the abstract will prove as far as demonstration can go, that it has the essential properties common to all living bodies.

I must again quote from Coleridge, he says: "By life I every where mean the true idea of life, or that most general form under which life manifests itself to us, which includes all its other forms. This I have stated to be the tendency to individuation and the degrees or intensities of life, to consist in the progressive realization of this tendency. The power which is acknowledged to exist wherever the realization is found, must subsist wherever the tendency is manifested. The power which comes forth and stirs abroad in the bird, must be latent in the egg."

The tendency to individuation cannot be more strongly marked than in the simple experiment of vaccination: we insert a small particle of the so-called vaccine lymph under the skin, and by this means we multiply to an enormous extent, the power which, in the first instance, we had in the form of minute corpuscles in a dry and apparently inert state; nevertheless, though in this condition there must have existed the tendency to individuation or multiplication of individual existence, and the germs are here to their active existence, as seen in the development of the vaccine vesicle, what the egg is to the bird,^[7] as described above; we may, therefore, say that the power which exhibits itself in the production of a vaccine vesicle, must have been latent in the dried matter. It is the opinion of Muller that the entire vital principle of the egg resides in the germinal disk alone, and since the external influences which act on the germs of the most different organic beings are the same, we must regard the simple germinal disk, consisting of granular amorphous matter, as the potential whole of the future animal, endowed with the essential and specific force or principle of the future being, and capable of increasing the very small amount of this specific force and matter, which it already possesses, by the assimilation of new matter.

After speaking of inanimate objects, Dr. Carpenter says; "and what compared with the permanence of these is the duration of any structure subject to the conditions of vitality? To be born, to grow, to arrive at maturity, to decline, to die, to decay, is the sum of the history of every being that lives; from man, in the pomp of royalty, or the pride of philosophy, to the gay and thoughtless insect that glitters for a few hours in the sunbeam and is seen no more; from the stately oak, the monarch of the forest through successive centuries, to the humble fungus which shoots forth and withers in a day."

To be born, signifies the faculty of reproduction existing or having existed in an antecedent being to that one born, and also that itself possesses equally a like power. To be born, is the first expression which must be used in speaking of the faculties or properties of living beings as independent existences, the annual formation of buds, trees, and shrubs, is a multiplication of the species; the coral and various budding polypes increase by this process, indeed what is the seed of a plant, or the egg of a bird, or the ovum of mammalia, but cast off buds; in all, the new being was originally a portion of its parent, and if we examine the ovary of the vegetable, the bird, or the mammal, can we find any expression more fitting to designate the process than that of budding. To be born then, is the evidence of an act of one living being, and the commencement of a series of vital phenomena in another, but all these are subsequent to reproduction, and constitute another chain of vital acts, all tending to a similar result, the multiplication of the species.^[8]

Now, whether we apply the philosophical language of Coleridge, or the language of observation of Muller, in confirmation of the doctrine here inculcated, we arrive at the same point.

Do we not witness in the newly formed vaccine vesicle, an increase of the specific force and principle? We certainly have acquired by the process of vaccination a manifold multiplication of power, and is there not also assimilation of new matter in which this power resides? And does not every particle of this new matter contain within itself the same force and principle, as existed in that which generated it?

"We revert again to potentiated length in the power of magnetism (reproduction); to surface in the power of electricity, and to the synthesis of both or potentiated depth in constructive, that is chemical affinity."^[9]

Some may be at a loss to conceive, at first, how irritability may be considered a property of all vegetable matter; that it does exist in some vegetables is certain, but that it does exist in all living beings is equally certain;^[10] the term, however, which would appear more appropriate when that irritability does not exhibit itself in an appreciable form, is impressibility. Irritability, as commonly understood, is seen in its highest condition in muscular tissue; but "the irritable power and an analogon of voluntary motion first dawn on us in the vegetable world in the stamina and anthers at the period of impregnation."—"The insect world is the exponent of irritability, as the vegetable is of reproduction."

The property of irritability attains its acme in man, the most highly organized of all beings; and its gradations pass downwards through the whole scale of animate creation; not so reproduction, for this faculty observes the very opposite direction, for in plants a single impregnation is sufficient for the evolution of myriads of detached lives.

Reproduction is a fact, it is an essential property of life, and is a reality to us from observation; but irritability is not so tangible and demonstrable a property. We nevertheless may assume its universality, from the circumstance that we lose sight of it by imperceptible degrees; the irritability of the sensitive plant is as much irritability as that of the highly organized muscle; but because the faculty evades our perception, "in tapering by degrees, becoming beautifully less," we have no reason for pronouncing its total extinction at any one point of the vegetable kingdom,^[11] any more than we should have in saying that we see the end of the earth, when describing the extent of our vision as we stand on the sea shore. The extreme limit of our vision is the tangent of the circle in reference to our visual organs; but how many tangential points there may be beyond, it is impossible to say without knowing the dimensions of the circle.

I think we are now in a condition to assume, as far as abstraction will conduct us without proceeding to an extreme length, that the materies morbi, or, as I will now call them for the sake of clearer distinction, semina morbi, possess those properties which in the abstract are common to all living beings.

Another argument strikes me as capable of adding further strength to the proposition. We need but be told that a small piece of iron was placed in a certain position with regard to another piece of iron, and that the smaller piece moved through a given space and became attached to the larger, to infer that magnetic force was in operation. Supposing this magnet then to be folded in paper, and that it be promiscuously placed near a compass, the deflection of the needle would indicate that some object in the vicinity was the cause of the deflection; we may farther try what positions the needle takes by varying the position of the packet, and thus point out which is the north and which the south pole of the screw of paper. If we may consider attraction then to be to gravitation what reproduction is to life, we do not err in saying in the one instance that there is a living being, and in the other there is a magnet.

The nebular theory, from which some astronomers made the foundation of many speculations, came with so much interest to our minds that the fascination could not be resisted. It was most delightful to revel in the imagination that we possessed a key to the mode of formation of the starry hosts, and when speculation had taken its extreme limits in the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and the nebulæ had served as the ground work of a gigantic scheme, Lord Ross's monster telescope swept the heavens of its cobwebs. We can imagine this great promoter of science saying to us, Gentlemen, the clouds which have obscured you, are composed of myriads of stars, and comprise systems as vast and as luminous as our own, had you but power of vision to discern them. A new light thus appeared to philosophers, and though no great practical results may flow from the discovery, it is instructive from the fact that the imperfectly aided or unaided vision, should not limit legitimate inference. The nebulæ before Lord Ross's discovery were to the astronomer what the materies of epidemic and infectious disease are to medical men. In the absence however of a giant microscope to reveal such great truths, we may yet dimly shadow them by the light of our reason. It was predicted in 1849 that minute vegetable germs, in all probability all of the same type, were the agents producing epidemic and infectious disease. In 1850, Mr. Oke Spooner says,^[12] "On examining the matter of Small Pox and Cow Pox in every stage, he finds its essential character to consist of a number of minute cells not exceeding the 10,000th part of an inch in diameter: being about one-fourth smaller than the globules of the blood, containing within their circumference many still more minute nuclei, and presenting beyond their circumference bud-like cells of the same size and character as those contained within the circle."

Should these observations made by Mr. Spooner turn out to be correct, they will but fulfil my anticipations. Then again shall we see the same application of imperfect vision to the limitation or temporary obstruction of solid and determinate knowledge.

We may reasonably expect that these bodies, discovered by Mr. Spooner, should be the elementary matters of disease. Their existence was predicted from the probability that living matter must be the agent; moreover, that this matter when discovered would be cellular, most probably resembling the yeast plant as described by Mr. Spooner.

It was predicted that a planet would be discovered in a certain position in the heavens, because the perturbations of a comet indicated an attracting body in the path of the eccentric wanderer; the prediction and the fulfilment were almost simultaneous.

SECTION II.

HISTORICAL NOTICE OF EPIDEMIC DISEASES.

The earliest notices we have of Pestilences are contained in Holy Writ. The plagues which smote the Egyptians in the time of Moses are not unworthy some comment here. Of those ten plagues, four out of the number were due to the miraculous appearance of myriads of the lower animal tribes, in three instances of insects,^[13] viz. lice, flies, and locusts; in the fourth, when Aaron stretched forth his hand with his rod over the streams, over the rivers, and the ponds, frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. In these instances living beings are made the instruments in God's hand for the punishment of the wicked. These plagues include the second, third, fourth, and eighth. The first plague is mentioned as a conversion of the waters into blood. Now if we may take this expression as being literal, there is no reason to suppose that this blood differed in any respect from ordinary sanguineous liquid; we therefore may assume, as the blood is every where in Scripture spoken of as the life, that this fluid was endowed with vital properties.

The fifth plague is described as a murrain among beasts; and the sixth, as exhibiting itself as "a boil breaking forth with blains, upon man and upon beast."^[14] Now these affections bear a resemblance to the diseases known to us at the present day through authentic records. The Black Death of the 14th century affords in its history but too awful a picture of the horrors of such pestilences. In the tenth plague, the smiting of the first-born, we are not told by what means it was brought about; but we have something even here to lead us to conjecture. In the second visitation of the Black Death, there were destroyed a great many children whom it had formerly spared, and but few women. The seventh plague of hail is within our conception; as is also that of darkness, the ninth plague.

It is not a little remarkable that of the ten plagues, seven of them depended upon agents intelligible to our comprehension; we can conceive of the invasion of a country by myriads of loathsome insects and reptiles, and can imagine the wrath of an offended Deity directing the force of a supernatural storm of hail upon a disobedient people; and we can conjecture, though faintly, the consternation of human nature on being subjected to a total darkness of three days' duration, when we consider that darkness has been described, as "a darkness that might be felt."

From this abstract we discover that the three plagues whose causes we cannot understand, or rather upon which no light has been thrown by Scripture, bear analogies to those which we recognise, in the writings of modern authors, as fearful pestilences.

It is now our province to reflect on the causes supposed to be in operation in the three instances, which become naturally separated from the rest.

We are told that a murrain appeared among the cattle, without any preliminary step. When the blains broke out upon man and beast, Moses had been previously directed by the Almighty to take handfuls of the ashes of the furnace, and sprinkle them towards the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. "And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt."

Another coincidence, in connexion with subsequent pestilences, arrests the attention, on the subject of the mysterious appearance on these occasions of matter resembling dust being prevalent about the houses, and on the clothes of the people. Clouds also, and showers of dust-like particles, were not of infrequent occurrence. Indeed, in the summer of 1849, during the progress of the Cholera, several phenomena of a similar nature were observed and authenticated; I myself can bear testimony to one instance of the kind. It was observed by many persons in my neighbourhood after the passage of an ominous and lurid cloud, that as they walked their clothes became covered with a singular dust-like matter of very peculiar appearance. That this phenomenon was not destitute of significance may be gathered from the fact, that on the night of that day several severe cases of Cholera occurred, though our village had been comparatively free for ten days.

Hecker, in writing on the Black Death says, the German accounts expressly speak of a "thick stinking mist which advanced from the east,^[15] and spread itself over Italy; there could be no deception in so palpable a phenomenon." It is not unworthy of mention, that in the East successive invasions of locusts "which had never perhaps darkened the sun in thicker swarms," preceded the great outbreak of this disease, for they left famine in their train.

From 1500 to 1503 in Germany and France, during the prevalence of the sweating sickness, spots of different colours made their appearance, "principally red, but also white, yellow, grey, and black, often in a very short time, on the roofs of houses, on clothes, on the veils and neckerchiefs of women, &c." Blood rain is also mentioned as having occurred at this time, which consisted of the aggregation of minute particles of red matter.

In the seven plagues, miraculous operations of the Deity consisted in the unusual manifestation of phenomena, but which in their effects are recognizable as of clear and definite import. The miracles here are—in the mode of producing the swarms of frogs, locusts, &c. but they are manifest and unmistakeable causes of plague and famine; in the other three, on the contrary, we witness only the effects, the causes are hidden from us; we may, therefore, as in current events, legitimately investigate the subject, and what better course can be adopted than that which classifies the traditionary past with all subsequent history. Presuming such a method of research to be admitted, I have assumed that as the causes of the seven plagues have been distinctly given, the others, though only mentioned in their effects, were due to causes of a nature in some way to be compared with their concomitants, that is to say, if a special intervention of the Deity brought about a miraculous appearance of frogs, lice, &c. there is but little reason to doubt that some other agent was miraculously multiplied and concentrated to induce the murrain, engender the blain, and smite the first-born: as if to lead us into this enquiry, on the visitation of the blain in man and beast, the Bible History tells us that Moses threw ashes of the furnace, which became a dust throughout all the land of Egypt; we cannot imagine that this simply as ashes could have caused the blain, we may conclude that by some special miracle, either the ashes were converted into a specific form of matter capable of inducing the effects recorded, or that an independent septic matter was generated for the purpose. If the latter, the act of throwing the ashes of the furnace into the air may have been intended to signify that the extremely minute division of the particles when thus cast into space, typified the inscrutable and hidden nature of the matter endowed with such marvellous properties.^[16]

Further on in the book of Leviticus are passages which I cannot forbear transcribing, for they point out to us most indubitably a line of enquiry in reference to diseases of a contagious nature.

"The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, whether it be a woollen garment, or a linen garment, whether it be in the warp or woof, of linen or of woollen, whether in a skin, or in any thing made of skin, and if the plague be greenish or reddish in the garment … it is a plague of leprosy, and shall be shewed unto the Priest, and the Priest shall look upon the plague and shut up it that hath the plague seven days; and he shall look on the plague on the seventh day; if the plague be spread in the garment, either in the warp, &c … the plague is a fretting leprosy, it is unclean. He shall therefore burn that garment … wherein the plague is, for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire. And if the Priest shall look, and behold, the plague be not spread in the garment … then the Priest shall command that they wash the thing wherein the plague is, and he shall shut it up seven days more: and the Priest shall look on the plague, after that it is washed: and behold if the plague have not changed his colour, and the plague be not spread, it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the fire; it is fret inward; whether it be bare within or without. And if the Priest look and behold the plague be somewhat dark after the washing of it, then he shall rend it out of the garment … and if it appear still in the garment either in the warp or the woof … it is a spreading plague: thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire. And the garment … which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time and shall be clean."—Chap. xiii. 47–58.

Again in Deuteronomy. The curse for disobedience: "The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave to thee until he have consumed thee from off the land.—The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the drought, and with blasting, and with mildew, and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.—The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee until thou be destroyed."

It may be said, and I doubt not will be said, all this is unnecessarily dragging the sacred volume into an enquiry totally foreign to its general tenor; on the contrary, however, I maintain by that Book we are to learn the ways of God to man, and further, that no study can impress mankind with so awful, so terrific an idea of his responsible position, as that which leads him into the investigation of the causes by which the Almighty, doubtless in His wisdom, has thought fit at various epochs of this world's history, to place man face to face with pestilence, famine and sudden death.

There is no man would less willingly than myself introduce profanely the revelations of Scripture. The observations here made are not, therefore, intended for light or heedless controversy; if they have a significance of any import, let them be alluded to in the same spirit with which they have been quoted; if they convey nothing for approval to the reader, let silence rest upon them. To those who would fain disregard my request, let me recall to their minds the veneration which from childhood I trust we have always felt on hearing or seeing those two words—Holy Bible.

It is yet to be determined, whether the greenish or reddish appearance of the garment spoken of, as being contaminated with the plague of the leprosy had any specific relation to the disease itself. The priest orders that the garment shall be shut up seven days, and on the seventh day, if the plague be increased, by which, of course, is meant if the greenish or reddish colour have increased, and from which we may gather that a power of spontaneous increase was possessed by the matter, such a result indicated a fretting leprosy, and the garment was to be burnt. Again, though there may have been no increase, but a persistence of the coloured matter after shutting up and washing the garment, it is to be burnt, for it is fret inward, signifying, that the germs of the affection are still there, and may soon increase. Other rules follow in reference to the plague of leprosy, and the mode of deciding whether an article be unclean or clean is definitely laid down, but our purpose is served in mentioning the above, to shew that in the time of Moses the spontaneous increase of certain minute multiplying germs was supposed to have a close connexion with disease. It is equally clear, that the priests were aware by the order given them, that if the ordinary modes of purifying articles of clothing failed in their effect, the safest and surest method of destroying infectious matter was to resort to the practice of consuming by fire all materials capable of propagating an infectious malady.

The facts above noticed, accurately correspond to what we now know as applicable to the matter of infectious and contagious maladies. It is a rule, I believe universally adopted throughout the Poor-houses of this country, to put the clothes of all persons about to become residents in these establishments, into ovens, where they are submitted to a temperature incompatible with the existence of either animal or vegetable life. By this means all living matters are destroyed, but the fabrics and inorganic matters retain their properties intact. This simple proceeding, I am credibly informed, is an effectual preventive of contamination by articles of clothing, a desideratum of no small importance, when it is remembered that the diseases among the poor owe much of their inveteracy to the accumulation of effete organic matters about their persons and clothes.

A few more observations are called for on the quotation from Deuteronomy, in which allusion is made to living matter being an agent in the production of disease. In the curse upon the children of Israel for disobedience, we read that they are to be smitten with mildew. No further information, however, is vouchsafed to us, nevertheless, we can conceive the wretched condition of those on whom the curse might fall. Again, we find in a continuation of this curse that the Almighty uses means such as He adopted in the sixth plague of the Egyptians. The ashes of the furnace became a small dust in all the land of Egypt, breaking forth with blains upon man and beast. In the curse of the Israelites the words are: "The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from Heaven shall it come down upon thee until thou be destroyed."

It might be conjectured that the absence of rain would be sufficient to account for the extinction of the people on whom the curse was pronounced, by the famine and drought necessarily attendant upon the loss of moisture. But this does not appear to be the meaning of the passage, for the powder and dust are mentioned as the agents of destruction; besides, in the continuation of the curse, the locust is to destroy the grain, the worm the grapes, and the olive is to shed his fruit; we may thus take for granted that drought and famine are not to be caused by the showering of powder and dust, it must consequently be supposed that the effects of the dust in the instance of the Egyptians are to be compared and classified with those of the dust which smote the Israelites.

As far then as Sacred History conducts us in the enquiry, concerning the causes of pestilences, we gain encouragement in the belief that living germs are the active agents, for in the case of the leprosy, we have evidence of reproduction in connexion with infection, which, if our line of argument be tenable, amounts to demonstration; then, in the other instances of the plagues, by boils and blains, they distinctly bear comparison with the accounts given by profane writers, of the visitations of pestilences on the earth, subsequently to those mentioned in Scripture history.

This leads now to the consideration of recorded facts observed and noted during the various Epidemics in the early and subsequent periods of Man's History, as given by those on whom reliance may be fairly placed.

Setting aside the uncertain information contained in the writings of the Chinese,^[17] a people whose progress in the science and practice of Medicine has nothing to commend it (even as it is at the present day) to the notice either of the physician or the historian, unless it be to the latter as a mark of peculiarity both in a social and political point of view—passing also over the Egyptians, the Arabians, and the Greeks—and even Hippocrates himself, we are driven to the Romans for any authentic or precise notice of Epidemic Affections. It has been attributed to Hippocrates that he predicted the appearance of the Plague at Athens, and that when it was introduced into Greece he dispelled it, "by purifying the air with fires into which were thrown sweet-scented herbs and flowers along with other perfumes."^[18] But little advantage can be derived from enquiries concerning the first appearance of any disease, for the probability of discovering the primary cause is certainly a hopeless case, if attempted by means of the writings of ancient authors, when it is recollected that with all the science and learning of the ancient Egyptians, the use of optical instruments was not comprised among the paraphernalia of their arts. The knowledge that was limited to the powers of natural vision, where the foundation of knowledge is based upon facts obtained through the aid of that penetrator of nature's secrets, the microscope, offers no advantages to the student of the present day.

To say that a disease commenced in the East and travelled westward, and at length found a habitation and a name in every part of the globe, is no more than to say that disease is coeval with the fall of man. The cause is as much hidden in the region of its birth, as in that where it sojourns for a time. The cause of the sweating sickness was as much a mystery in England as in all the other nations of Europe, which were visited by its devastating power. And these observations apply with as much force to one disease as another; for even our indigenous ague, originating in some places so limited that the shadow of a passing cloud may mark the boundary of its dwelling place, as inscrutably evades our vigilance, with all the appliances that art can bring to our assistance, in endeavouring to evoke its extraordinary properties under the cognizance of our senses.

If we weigh the air which carries the poison, or analyze it by the most delicate chemical tests, or take the weight of the atmosphere which is charged with it, or if we take the blood which carries the germs of the disease to the tissues of the body, and submit them after the work of destruction is accomplished, to the most rigid inspection, we can but exclaim,