If there were a kind of diseased structure, the histological elements of which were capable of maintaining a separate and independent existence out of the body, it seems to me that the shadowy boundary between morbid growth and Xenogenesis would be effaced.  And I am inclined to think that the progress of discovery has almost brought us to this point already.  I have been favoured by Mr. Simon with an early copy of the last published of the valuable “Reports on the Public Health,” which, in his capacity of their medical officer, he annually presents to the Lords of the Privy Council.  The appendix to this report contains an introductory essay “On the Intimate Pathology of Contagion,” by Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, which is one of the clearest, most comprehensive, and well-reasoned discussions of a great question which has come under my notice for a long time.  I refer you to it for details and for the authorities for the statements I am about to make.

You are familiar with what happens in vaccination.  A minute cut is made in the skin, and an infinitesimal quantity of vaccine matter is inserted into the wound.  Within a certain time a vesicle appears in the place of the wound, and the fluid which distends this vesicle is vaccine matter, in quantity a hundred or a thousandfold that which was originally inserted.  Now what has taken place in the course of this operation?  Has the vaccine matter, by its irritative property, produced a mere blister, the fluid of which has the same irritative property?  Or does the vaccine matter contain living particles, which have grown and multiplied where they have been planted?  The observations of M. Chauveau, extended and confirmed by Dr. Sanderson himself, appear to leave no doubt upon this head.  Experiments, similar in principle to those of Helmholtz on fermentation and putrefaction, have proved that the active element in the vaccine lymph is non-diffusible, and consists of minute particles not exceeding 1/20000th of an inch in diameter, which are made visible in the lymph by the microscope.  Similar experiments have proved that two of the most destructive of epizootic diseases, sheep-pox and glanders, are also dependent for their existence and their propagation upon extremely small living solid particles, to which the title of microzymes is applied.  An animal suffering under either of these terrible diseases is a source of infection and contagion to others, for precisely the same reason as a tub of fermenting beer is capable of propagating its fermentation by “infection,” or “contagion,” to fresh wort.  In both cases it is the solid living particles which are efficient; the liquid in which they float, and at the expense of which they live, being altogether passive.