Epidemic and specific contagious diseases : considerations as to their nature and mode of origin / by H. Charlton Bastian, M.A.

  • Bastian, H. Charlton.
Date:
[1871], [©1871]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epidemic and specific contagious diseases : considerations as to their nature and mode of origin / by H. Charlton Bastian, M.A. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    strengthened by the increased knowledge which gradually arouse coa- cerning the various parasitic maladies to which man and the lower animals were liable. Writing in 1839, Sir Henry Holland says in his essay 6';? the Hypothesis of Insect-Life as a Cause of Disease, '' The question is, what weight we may attach to the opinion that certain diseases, and especially some of epidemic and contagious kind, are de- rived from minute forms of animal life, existing in the atmosphere under particular circumstances, and capable by application to the lining membranes, or other parts, of acting as a virus on the human body. Now, the fact of the multiplication of the virus within the body was ihe peculiarity of these diseases which, above all others, caused such an hypo- thesis to be received with favour. Causes which are specific and which seem capable of self-multiplication—what can such agents be but living things of some kind, plant or animal ? This mode of argument was, with many, all powerful. And when, after the discovery of the yeast- plant by Schwann, in 1836, new doctrines concerning fermentation began to prevail, the views of those who believed in the living nature of the specific causes of epidemic diseases were in part strengthened. If all fermentations were initiated by the agency of living organisms, and the specific diseases were comparable to processes of fermentation, then how natural was it that many who were moreover influenced by the other analogies, should be led to imagine that the specific causes of these diseases were also living organisms ? Only now, attention became directed to the much lower organisms which are so frequently associ- ated with fermentative and putrefactive changes, instead of to insects ** minute beyond the reach of all sense. Here then is the origin of what in modern times has been termed • The Germ-Theory of Disease.' Like homoeopathy and phrenology, this theory carried with it a kind of simplicity and attractiveness, which insured its acceptability to the minds of many. Now, however, it seems to rest upon foundations only a little more worthy of consideration than those upon which these other theories are based. But, owing to its influence, in combination with the more generally received doctrines concerning the origin of life, there has gradually grown up an unwil- lingness in the minds of many to believe that these contagious diseases can arise de novo. And this being one of those theories which tend to curb inquiry, and to check the possible growth of sanitary knowledge in certain highly important directions, it seems to me necessary to look with scrutinising care to its foundations, not only with the view to the advancement of medical science, but with the direct object of removing all checks which may exist to the growth of sanitary precautions against the origin of these most pestilential affections. Let us see, then, how far the 'theory' fulfils the conditions which all good theories do fulfil—how far it explains a great number of the phenomena in question, without being irreconcilable with others. The advocates of the * germ-theory' have always rested their belief in it, in the main, because they considered that it offered a ready ex- planation of the increase of the virus of the contagious diseases within the body of the affected person. This increase, they suppose, is not otherwise to be explained. All other considerations brought forward in support of the theory are just as explicable by another supposition. Fully admitting that the occurrence of a process of organic self-repro- duction would be a very adequate way of accounting for the increase of Whilst on the preceding page, the animal species had been admitted to be ■ minute, beyond the reach of all sense.