Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/66

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love and its hidden history.

on the casks in wine-cellars, and another which lives only on the drops of soot which the workmen let fall on the soil of mines. 'Have the seeds of these vegetables remained without use from the origin of the world to the day that they found their proper soil?'"

"Professor S———, of Cleveland, Ohio, has the very great reputation of having first discovered and demonstrated the cause of fever and ague to be an algoid vegetation which is found in the soils of malarial districts. This sends out its minute spores, which rise in the air, are inhaled into the lungs, and thus find their way into the system, where they grow till they are found in the blood, in all the secretions and excretions, and on the cutaneous surface. This discovery would seem to be enough for one man, as it has been sought after for ages. The doctor gives particular direction what to look for in a drop of blood, naming some sixty-seven different things to be noted, and even then, the catalogue is not complete. This is rather startling to ordinary observers, who have been accustomed to see only two items in a drop of blood, the red corpuscle and the white. Such are apt to speak of the doctor as a monomaniac. They do not receive the idea that rheumatism is caused by oxalate of lime, cystine, phosphates, and emboli of fibrine in the blood; nor do they welcome the announcement that algoid and fungoid spores and filaments are found in certain pathological states of the blood as causes of disease. Ordinary microscopic observers are slow to believe in the statement that small-pox is caused by a vegetation which has an algoid and fungoid phase growing together, and that cow-pox is simply the algoid phase alone. It is also difficult for them to understand that typhoid fever is caused by a vegetation which grows on the skin, in the blood, and in the Peyer's and Brunner's glands of the small intestines; all which views the doctor announces in the present work. It is easy to explain this distrust, on the ground that the views are novel, strange, and opposed to ordinary ideas. What is brought forward to sustain these extraordinary assertions? The doctor simply states, that he has made over thirty-five thousand examinations of blood, some of the examinations extending over half a day's time. He has demonstrated to many physicians — among them is the writer — certain appearances in the blood which correspond to his descriptions, this blood being taken from