Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1878-11-07
GERMS OF DISEASE.
Something of the Theory Of Con-
tagiOns Spreading by Means
of seeds.

The terrible prevalence of the yell W
fever this season, ami the diff rent the
orieS advanced as 10 its cause, renders
of peculiar interert a paper on The
Germ Theory of Disease" read last
evening by Or. Joseph Richardson,
Professor of Hygiene in the University
of Pennsylvania, before the Social Sci
ence Association. An advocate of the
theory for ten years, DIR. Richardson,
expressed himself gratified at the grad
ual conversion of physicians TO belief
in the theory, although still many
look upon it with distrust, if not with
contempt.
The germ theory, he said, was first
advanced by the celebrated LiGnUSis
over century ago, and, with mOditi
cations, has been advocated since. The
belief thit smallpox or other contagi-
| Gus maladieS arise without previous
exposure to seeds of disease Dr. Rich
ardsOn denounced as perniciouS.
The general absence of a second at.
tack in contagious diseases is an admi-
rable explanation of the hypothesis
that the parasite fungus on the first oc-
casiOn had exhausted all, or nearly all,
of some peculiar (unkuown) organic in
| III Jul DOulCS W lIlCll 10 dUoO-
lutely requisite for its support, on the
same law that will, as every farmer
knows, Cause his wheat to TAIL if ne
plants it repeatedly in the same ground
and neg glects to secure due rotation of
crops.
Dr. Richardson continued that it
seemed 10 him that great benefit would
result from its beiug understood by ev-
cry man, woman and child that the
contagious of smallpox, yellow fever,
| typhoid fever, scarlet fever, measles,
diphIheria and cholera are probably
composed of exceedingly minute seeds
or spores so small that row of 10000
of them placed eud to end would meas
ure less than an inch in length, and a
mass the diameter of d dot on u printed
page might contain over $4,000. Each
of these $4,000 is capable of producing
its kind with almost incOnceivaDle rap
idity, 50 that, supposing, for example,
that the zypodesimus of Professor Let
zerech is really the mOrbific agent
causing diphtheria, a particle OF the
grayish false membrane which appears
in the throat of patients Ill with the
complaint mentioned might contain
separate seeds enough to infect every
individual of the whole continent of
North America with diphtheretic dis.
ease.
Each individual, according to this
theory, is actually a hothouse for the
seeds or spores of that malay, for the
patients are continually giving off in
all directions through the skin, breath,
perspiratiun or other secretiOns, mil-
lions of these spores, one of which, if
it were received into the human sys-
tenn under favorable circumstances,
would rapidly reproduce itself, and,
after few days or weeks (the period
of incubatiOn), }, give rise to u new case
of the disease, which is again a new
hotbed of contagiOn for other unaffected
organisms.
The entrance into communities of
! living spores or seeds q. disease should
be avoided at any cost, and the most
stringent quarantine ms Sures should
be adopted. DIR. Richardson related
the Case of the farmers in Germany,
who, when one potato bug was found,
covered the entire field with straw
saturated with Kerosene, and, firing it,
destroyed every vestige of auiInal life.
This, he said, had been much ridiculed,
hut he advocated just such expeditions
measures in dealing with contagious
diseases. He was asked whether any
facts bearing out the germ theory had
been discovered by the physicians at
tending the yellow fever patients, and
answered that Prof. Joseph Jones, OF
New Orleans, clSimS tn nave discover
ed bactiria in the blood of patients suf-
iering from the fever.-Phild. Record.