145
M5

UC-NRLF

B 3 103 7fiD

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

ON THK

CRYFTOGAMOUS ORIGIN

MALARIOUS AND EPIDEMIC

FEVERS,

BY

J. K. /MITCHELL, A.M., M.D.,

L C 1 ICAt'SrElS I C I N

PROFESSOR OF PRA

E IN THE JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE
OF PHILADELPHIA.

"It has also happened that reflecting men, guided by general ideas and analogies,
have enunciated truths which, only at some future period, could command general
acceptance and acknowledgment. This always has happened, and always will
happen, when the direct proofs of such a truth are wanting." — BISCHOFF.

" The infection may be aptly compared to the seeds of vegetables or the eggs of ani-
mals, which require a nice concurrence of certain degrees of heat, moisture real,
nutriment, £c., to animate them."— SIR GILBERT BLAKE.

PHILADELPHIA:

LEA AND BLANCHARD.

1849.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by
LEA AND BLANCHARD,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania.

PHILADELPHIA :
T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS.

INTRODUCTION AND DEDICATION.

TO THE CANDIDATES FOR GRADUATION IN THE JEFFERSON
MEDICAL COLLEGE, OF THE SESSION OF 1846-1847:

GENTLEMEN :

To you, I had the honor of delivering, nearly in their
present shape, the lectures which I now send to the press.
Previously, I had not put my ideas on the subject of which
they treat, into so formal a shape, although I had an-
nounced for years, to each successive class, my impression,
that possibly, the protophytes might afford a good expla-
nation of the causation of malarious, and other diseases
of a febrile nature. Of the production thus, at least of
yellow fever and cholera, I entertained less doubt, and
taught, therefore, the sentiment with less reserve. But,
although urged by some of you, and more formally re-
quested by the class by which you were immediately suc-
ceeded, to place my opinions on this subject before the
public, I refrained from their publication through aversion
to controversy, and the hope that time would bring more
conclusive evidence of their truth or falsehood. Other
friends, whose age, position, and learning, entitled their
opinions to the highest respect, did me the honor to listen
to my elucidations, and to recommend their publication.
Indeed, one of them, well known to you for his great
learning and refined eloquence, wrote to Dr. Forbes, of

iv INTRODUCTION AND DEDICATION.

London, offering these lectures to him for his reprint of
American Medical Tracts. His plan, not embracing un-
published manuscripts, excluded them; but he kindly sug-
gested the propriety of their immediate publication by
myself, as he thought an essay on a subject of so much
novelty ought not, through my aversion to publicity, to
remain inedited.

Since that time, a work of some merit has been printed
in England, and dedicated, by permission, to John Forbes,
M.D., by its author, Charles Cowdell, M.B., M.R.C.S.,
London, 1848. It professes to be, "A Disquisition on
Pestilential Cholera, being an attempt to explain its phe-
nomena, nature, cause, prevention, and treatment, by re-
ference to an extrinsic fungous origin." A review of
works on cholera, inclusive of that of Dr. Cowdell, ap-
peared in the July number of the British and Foreign
Medico-Chirurgical Review, for 1848, in which the re-
viewer recommends to Dr. Cowdell to extend his hypo-
thesis, which he thinks ingenious and interesting, "to
all epidemics. He would, perhaps, find yellow fever and
plague still more to his purpose than cholera."

Dr. Cowdell's book, and the review of it, reached me
nearly at the same time, and left me no further excuse for
withholding these lectures from the public, unless I pre-
ferred to lose what little of reputation might be obtained
by sending them to the press.

It will be seen that I have not attempted to conceal the
sentiments of former writers on this subject, although my
ignorance of German prevents me from knowing exactly,
how far the authors of that country, Henle, Muller, and
others, have carried their ideas. Nothing in Dr. Cow-
dell's book occurs to show that he was aware of any pre-
existent fungous theory of fevers, nor of the wide dissemi-

INTRODUCTION AND DEDICATION. V

nation of that hypothesis on this side of the Atlantic ; so
that he is apparently entitled to the credit of having
made, if not a new, at least an original theory of the
cause of cholera.

As you have heard these lectures, gentlemen, you may
not have forgotten that, in making my selection of facts
and observations, I have, with a single exception, studi-
ously avoided an appeal to phenomena perceived only by
myself. I have created no facts for this subject; because
I have long learned, as you will learn, to trust reservedly
to alleged truths observed by a theorist, who cannot avoid,
however just he may be, the coloring which, through a
blinding partiality for a new discovery or hypothesis, is
too often given.

I have not, however, been idle. Experiments are in
progress which seem to promise more direct and unques-
tionable proof of the validity of our hypothesis ; but they
are yet incomplete, and therefore should not now appear,
lest they might load so young a conception with a too
dubious weight.

As there may, in the future, arise some dispute respect-
ing the paternity of the theory which is now proposed, I
may be indulged with the liberty of quoting the follow-
ing extract from a letter by Professor J. W. Bailey, in
answer to one from me:

" West Point, March 5th, 1845.
{ ' DOCTOR J. K. MITCHELL :

" My dear Sir : Please accept my thanks for your favor of the 29th ultimo.
I was interested in your letter on the fungous origin of fevers; and it ap-
pears to me that you make out a very strong case, and one which appears
more satisfactory than Liebig's somewhat vague ideas of ' communication
of motion,' being the cause of the propagation of contagious poisons, fer-

vi INTRODUCTIpN AND DEDICATION.

mentation, &c. Your theory will, at least, lead to experiment, while his, if
I comprehend it, leads to nothing, and is only a way of saying that we don't
understand the subject.*'

It would scarcely be proper, gentlemen, to overlook the
kind note addressed to me by a committee from the class
which immediately followed you, and which formed a
principal inducement for correcting for the press, the fol-
lowing lectures.

"Jefferson Medical College, December 8th, 1847.
" PROFESSOR MITCHELL.

" Sir : At a meeting of the class held last evening, the following resolu-
tion was unanimously adopted :

"'Resolved — That a committee be appointed to wait upon Professor
Mitchell, and request him to furnish for publication, his new and original
views of the nature and cause of malarious diseases.'

"Allow us, in fulfilling the agreeable duty imposed by the class, to ex-
press the high gratification we have derived from listening to the lectures
referred to, and to add our personal solicitations that you will grant the
favor which it is the object of the resolution to ask.
"Yours respectfully,

"W. P. THORNTON, of Mississippi.
« R. S. HAYNES, of Virginia.
" JNO. HORACE SELTZER, of Pennsylvania.
"CHAS. F. STANSBURY, of the District of Columbia, Chairman.
"JoHN 0. McREYXOLDS, of Kentucky, Secretary."

In reply to this kind request, I promised, when at lei-
sure, to cause the lectures to be published; and now com-
mence the work by offering to you, who heard them first,
in the form and substance in which they now appear, a
dedication of them. With the most sincere desire for the
promotion of your welfare, and with the greatest respect,
I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,

Your friend and preceptor,

J. K. MITCHELL.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

Theories of Malaria. — The Vegeto-animal Theory. — The Atmospheric
Theory. — The Sulphur-product Theory of Daniel—Theory of Hoff-
man.— Gaseous Theories. — Miscellaneous Theories. — Theory of Dr.
Robert Jackson. — Theory of Dr. Ferguson. — The Animaicular
Theory. - ..... 13—33

LECTURE II.

Habitudes of the Fungi. — Traces, among Authors, of the Fungous The-
ory.— Rapid growth of the Fungi.- — Their Poisonous Properties in-
crease as the Latitude decreases. — They are found chiefly in Au-
tumn. - - - - - - - 34 — 50

LECTURE III.

The Fungi are active almost exclusively at Night. — Fungiferous power
of Epidemic Periods and Seasons. — Sudw Jlnglicanus. — The Milz-
brand. — The Milk-sickness of the Western Country. - - 51 — 72

LECTURE IV.

Poisonous Quality of the Fungi. — They produce Fevers. — They pro-
duce Fevers which Remit or Intermit. — They produce Fevers with
Gangrene. — Fungi cause the Potato Rot. — The Fungi in the Atmo-
sphere.— Fungi cause many Cutaneous Diseases. — They also cause
Aphthae, a disease of the Mucous Membrane. — They are found in

Vlii CONTENTS.

the Stomach, in the Bowels, in the Peritoneal Cavity, are asso-
ciated with Indigestion, appear in Typhoid Fever, in the Bladder,
on the Pleura, in Cholera, and in Diabetic Urine. — The Fungi cause
many diseases of Insects and Reptiles, as the Muscardine of the
Silk-worm, &c. — They seem, according to Scripture, to produce Scalls
and Leprosy. — They are found after death in Pigeons, Fowls, and
other winged animals. - • 73 — 95

LECTURE V.

The Fungous Theory explains the cause of the Postponement of the
Effects of a Malarious Infection, and accounts for the nice Limita-
tion of Malaria, for the Effects of Dried Air, of Damp Sheets, of Fo-
mites. — Yellow Fever. — Cholera. — The Plague. — Localization of
Peculiar Diseases. — Quarantines. — Pestilential Premonitions.

96—116

LECTURE VI.

Hygienic Inconsistencies of Seasons and Places, explained. — The Ma-
remma of Italy. — Volcanic Eruptions affect the Health of the fol-
lowing, and not of the current year. — Fairy Rings. — Liebig's Theory
of the Cause and Non-recurrence of Diseases, refuted. — A new Ex-
planation of these, offered. — Why the First Cases of an Epidemic
are most Fatal. — Why Barren Plains are sometimes Sickly. — Re-
capitulation. ...... 117 — 138

\

ON THE

CEYPTOGAMOUS ORIGIN

MALARIOUS AND EPIDEMIC FEVERS.

LECTURE I.

THEORIES OF MALARIA.

THE most ancient authors allude to the noxious influence
of the air of marshes and stagnant pools. Some of them
indulge in speculations respecting the immediate cause of
its morbific power ; and here and there, in their writings,
may be detected, more or less vaguely expressed by them,
the opinions, by the publication of which, Lancisi, less
than two centuries ago, acquired so much reputation. His
treatise de noxiis paludum effluviis, gave consistency and
authority to the impression of the miasmatists, and the
loose idea of a former age, became the accepted sentiment
of the eighteenth century. By degrees, the medical pro-
fession, almost everywhere, adopted the theory of the
causation of periodical fevers by marsh air, and even
ascribed the poison to a decomposition of the vegetable
remains of low and wet places. After that time (1695),
2

14 THEORIES

with occasional modification from the fancy of each author,
the vegetable theory of miasm became almost an esta-
blished dogma of the schools, not often questioned until
the very time in which we live. Now, writers, dissatisfied
with the inexact condition of the subject, demand proofs
in favor of the marsh theory, which they cannot find; and
I may, perhaps, feel safe in asserting, that, at the present
day, few well-informed physicians accept the theory of
the miasmatists, as detailed by McCulloch.

Whatever view may be taken of the nature of the pes-
tilential cause, it is usually most potent in places of a
moist and marshy character, such as are the borders of
lakes and rivers ; and in such places it commonly most
abounds, when accompanied by a luxuriant vegetation and
a high temperature. As heat, moisture, and vegetation,
so commonly attend the production of malarious influ-
ence, careless observers, naturally enough, believe the
action of heat and moisture upon the vegetation, to be
the efficient cause of miasm; while they refer to con-
trasts of temperature and moisture as exhibited by day
and night, as the exciting causes of the periodical fevers
of such places.

Such conditions, predisposing and exciting, no doubt
cause such maladies ; but inquirers take very different
views of the mode of production, and of the immediate
agents concerned. Some conceive, as already stated, that
by decomposition, a predisposing poison is produced, suf-
ficient of itself often to excite disease, whilst dews and
change of temperature may occasionally precipitate or
^determine an attack. Others think that the mephitic va-
jpors of marshes only enfeeble health, and thus enable the
obvious changes of heat and moisture -to excite disease,
- which they often produce without any such preparation.

OP MALARIA. 15

A third party refers all cases of periodical disease exclu-
sively to sensible changes, and thinks the proximity of a
marsh only efficient as presenting an evaporating surface,
by which the air is made colder and damper.

Dissatisfied for many reasons, to be hereafter offered,
with the vegetable theory, and with the evaporating theory,
and indeed with the hypothesis by which both are united,
authors of our own time have suggested a variety of ex-
planations, which it may not be inexpedient to pass in
cursory review.

The commonly received marsh theory is well stated and
supported by MeCulloch, to whose work on malaria I re-
fer you for a view of that side of the question. It is, in a
much more masterly and precise manner, sustained by Di%
Craigie, of Edinburgh, to whose volumes on the Practice
of Medicine, you may most profitably resort for a learned,
lucid and, I think, impartial array of the facts and opin-
ions bearing on that side of the question. MeCulloch in-
volves himself in difficulties without seeming to see them,
whilst Craigie, although inclined to the same conclusions,
views with a master's eye, the whole of the impediments
and objections. The objections presented by the latter
are: the low temperature at which these disease-producing
changes may take place ; the unaccountable production
of them in places where there is no apparent vegetation
and often no marsh ; the exemption of certain places where
occur all the seeming elements of decomposition ; the inex-
plicable effects of rural cultivation ; and the unexplained
vicissitudes of health in the same places in different though
similar years.

Denying the vegetable theory, and indeed assuming the
position that we are as yet totally ignorant of the nature
and true source of the cause of malarious fevers, my emi-

16 THEORIES ^

nent colleague. Professor Dunglison, in his work on Hy-
giene, ably exposes the fallacy of the received opinions on
this subject. He is not favorably impressed, indeed, by
any of the many hypotheses with which an obscure, but
highly important subject like this, is sure to be loaded.

Not less antagonistic^ the received theory, is my friend,
Dr. John Bell, who, however ingenious and Jearned in his
opposition to it, does not also arrive at a negative conclusion,
but refers the morbid phenomena to the modification of
the sensible or appreciable conditions of the atmosphere.
His paper, contained in the Medical and Physical Journal,
for 1825, 1826, pp. 274-316, is worthy of an attentive
perusal, although written at a very early period of his
medical life.

Notwithstanding, therefore, the seeming supererogation,
my duty as a teacher compels me to offer to you at least
a summary of the objections to current opinions on this
subject.

The most forcible argument against the vegeto-aerial
theory, consists in the extraordinary exemption from ma-
larious diseases of places which, were it true, could not
escape a severe infliction. It is the more forcible, because
the theory is founded mainly upon the concurrence of such
diseases with heat, moisture and vegetation. If, then, it
can be shown that the alleged conditions exist in the most
perfect state, in very many places, without morbid results,
the universality of the coincidence can no longer be brought
to sustain the opinion.

Again, if many places can be cited, where these sup-
posed elements are not at work, which are nevertheless
noted for their insalubrity, the opinion becomes even less
tenable. It is still farther weakened by the fact, often
observed, that under precisely the same apparent circum-

OF MALARIA. 17

stances, healthy places become unhealthy, and sickly
places, salubrious. The marsh, the heat, the moisture and
the vegetation, remaining apparently the same, the health
of a region may vary from one extreme to the other.

I will now offer you some examples in illustration of
these positions:

McCulloch, the unqualified advocate of the Marsh theo-
ry, seems to have been very much perplexed by an excep-
tion to his rule, which lay just under his own eye. The
canal in St. James' Park, London, was, at the time he
wrote, notorious for the abundance of its aquatic plants,
causing, in autumn, an even intolerable stench. Yet he
congratulates the inhabitants, on their miraculous exemp-
tion from malarious fevers, " it being, perhaps, the only
exception in the world, at least wherever the climate equals
(in temperature) that of England." — (p. 50.)

Let us see how far his assertion is sustainable. The
town of Kingston, in the island of St. Vincent, is situated
at the bottom of a semicircular bay, and at the foot of a
mountain range, with high land on each side. The soil
consists of a black alluvial mould, evidently arising from
decaying vegetable matter. In one place, the bed of a
dried up water-course, branches of trees were found, and
the neighboring ground was covered with leaves, in dif-
ferent stages of decomposition, for upwards of eight inches
in depth, into which the feet sank at every step. " There,
then," says the deputy inspector of British hospitals and
fleets, Robert Armstrong, "we have all the elements ne-
cessary for the production of this vegeto-animal poison,
heat, moisture, decayed and decaying vegetable matter,
with as large a proportion of reptiles, insects and other
animal matters, as is found in other tropical countries ; yet
strange to say, the town of Kingston is one of the most

18 THEORIES ^

healthy spots in the West Indies. I was informed by the
staff-surgeon to the forces, who had long resided there,
that it was as healthy as the most favored spots in Eng-
land." As a very curious contrast to the statement of
Armstrong, we learn from Bishop Heber, that the wood
tracts of Nepaul and Malwa, having neither swamps nor
perceptible moisture, become in summer and autumn, so
pestiferous as to cause their abandonment even by the
birds and beasts.

Fordyce too, tells us that, in a part of Peru, where there
is almost a total absence of water, and of course of vegeta-
tion, fever and dysenteries render the country almost un-
inhabitable ; and according to Pringle, the dry unproduc-
tive sandy plains of Brabant, excite malarious fevers of
great intensity.

New South Wales extends from 10° 5' to 38° south la-
titude, embracing a region similarly situated to that of
America from the West Indies to the Chesapeake Bay.
It is subject to a rainy season, has streams, estuaries, and
extensive swamps. Around some of its towns there lies
a deep, black, highly productive vegetable mould. It is
liable to extraordinary inundations, which lay the country,
as far as the eye can reach, under a sheet of muddy water.
The temperature is quite as high as that of any other like
latitude. The coast is covered with mangroves, and skirt-
ed by rocks, reefs and islets. Among its products are
mahogany, oranges, lemons, guavas. The mosquito, with
myriads of insects and reptiles; parrots, paroquets and
other tropical birds, announce a hot, productive climate,
and lead us to look for a tainted air and a pestilential
habitude. But, notwithstanding all these threatening con-
ditions, the usual symbols of a sickly clime, New Holland
is remarkable for its healthfullness. Pulmonary diseases

OF MALARIA. 19

and, in the wet season, dysenteries are observed, but the
fevers incident to warm climates elsewhere, are here of rare
occurrence. In speaking of this country, Malte Brun has
this expression : " Hitherto we have heard of no such fatal
epidemic fevers as are frequent in some other colonies
situated in warm climates."

Mr. Titian Peale, the zealous and successful naturalist,
who accompanied Captain Wilkes on the exploring expedi-
tion to the Southern Ocean, writes to Professor Dunglison,
that he never saw a case of intermitting fever in either
natives or strangers, in the Polynesian Islands, although
the officers and men of the expedition lived and slept in
the midst of marsh stenches and mosquitoes, when the days
were hot, and the huts open and exposed.

Captain Wilkes himself describes these islands as fer-
tile, moist, hot, — but, yet as remarkably salubrious, as is
evinced by the general good health of the men, who were
often exposed at night, by the shore duties of the service,
to fatigue, night air and heavy dews.

The following examples of the truth of his general
statement, are found in the same work.

TONGATABOO is an organic island, formed by coral, is
rich, fiat and luxuriant, and oppressed by a temperature
rising to 98° F., offering a mean, during the sojourn of
the expedition, of 79° 25. There was much rain, and,
when clear, heavy dews. The writer supposes that these
phenomena must create sickness, but he sees many old
people, and admits that, although ashore at night, the
people of the expedition were not sufferers. Mr. Peale,
also, testifies to the good health of the place.

OVOLAU (Fegee) is a volcanic island, the mean tempe-
rature of which, for six weeks, was 77° 81; maximum,
96°; minimum, 62°. Turnips, radishes, and mustard

20 THEORIES

seed appeared above ground in twenty-four hours; melons
in three days; while marrowfat peas, fit for use, were
produced in five weeks. On this island, volcanic as Sar-
dinia, and hot as the Maremma, " fevers, whether re-
mittent or intermittent, were unknown."

In the two instances cited above, the islands closely re-
sembled each other in climate, temperature, and fertility,
but were contrasted as to origination, geology, and sur-
face, the one being organic, the other volcanic ; the one
being flat, the other mountainous; yet both enjoyed a de-
gree of salubrity totally at variance with our preconcep-
tions.

The Island of Soloo, in latitude 6° 01' North, enjoys a
temperature seldom below 70°, or above 90° ; that is,
about the mean of that of the pestilential western coast
of Africa. It is, however, healthy.

Menouf, the capital of Menoufyez, in Lower Egypt, is
situated on the banks of a canal formerly navigable, but
so no longer. This canal bathes the walls of Menouf
from south to west. Within a few yards of it lies another
canal of stagnant water, the space between, forming a
'road into the town. To the right of the south gate, lie
basins of water to rot flax in, which gave out a disa-
greeable odor. Here and there is a cemetery, and be-
tween them are pools for the same use, some of them
broken, neglected, and full of stagnant water. Menouf
has no gardens, its streets are narrow and dirty, and its
houses small and badly constructed. The people drink
the Nile water. The yearly inundation floods the country
around Menouf, up to the walls, but it does not continue
long under water, to which fact Surgeon Carrie ascribes
it healthfulness : " C'est pour cela sans doute que cette
ville est assez saine."

Iij addition to its other defects, the place is surrounded

OF MALARIA. 21

by a second wall, formed of dirt and rubbish, transported
from town, by which the view is obstructed, and the town
sheltered from the wind. Not only is Menouf assez saine
in other respects, but even the plague does less damage
here than in other parts of Egypt. (Degenettes.)

If the exception presented by the canal in St. James'
Park puzzled McCulloch, and was, at the time he wrote
that page, apparently, to him the only one, he alighted,
in his progress, upon another, at Singapore, which seemed
still harder to dispose of, without a severe shock to his
system.

My esteemed friend and former pupil, Dr. M. B. Hope,
Professor of Belles Lettres in the College at Princeton,
resided for some time as a missionary at Singapore, in
the East Indies, and adds to the details given by McCul-
loch, respecting Singapore, the following facts and opi-
nions.

"The Island of Singapore is, in the main, low and level.
There is one hill in the interior about 500 feet high, in
which granite rocks make their appearance. Scattered
here and there, are low round sand hills, the level ground
between which is formed of a ferruginous clay upon a
sandy substratum. The greater part of the island is
covered with jungle. Lofty trees, and a most luxuriant
vegetation are found in many places. The island is pretty
well watered by streams, which descend from the hills to
the sea. The tides have produced and sustained a chain
of marshes nearly all round the coast. In some places,
fresh and stagnant water covers the low grounds ex-
tensively.

"The city, which lies in latitude 1° 17', contains a
highly mixed population of about 20,000 souls: Chinese,
Malays, Indians, Europeans, &c. It is nearly surrounded
by marshes, the jungles of which are almost impervious,

22 THEORIES

and are infested by tigers and other ferocious or wild
animals. Here and there the Chinese have cleared and
cultivated the ground ; and there are, near the city, some
sugar and nutmeg plantations.

"The vegetation is incredibly rapid in its growth; and
its decay is not less wonderfully great, as may be supposed,
when the soil is rich, and the mean annual temperature
is, in the morning and evening, 79° 45', and at noon 84°.

" Astonishing as it may seem under such circumstances,
fevers of any kind were very rare, particularly among the
natives. Now and then remittent fevers might occur,
and, yet more rarely, intermittents. Foreigners were, of
course, more readily attacked, but not often, except
through imprudent exposure to fatigue, or the sun.

" Singapore is considered as a kind of sanatorium for
the Oriental invalids, who go thither from every quarter
of the Eastern world, to escape from malaria, or to re-
cover from chronic diseases."

The empire of Brazil extends from the equator to the
southern tropic. It is watered by vast rivers and count-
less streams, abounds in lakes and marshes, and, under a
burning sun, smokes from the vapor of impetuous rains,
and boasts a vegetation unsurpassed for abundance, va-
riety, and rapid transitions. Along an extended coast,
the mountain ranges are nearly parallel to the sea ; so
that behind them the sea breeze exerts no cooling power,
and the air is stagnant and hot. Even at Rio Janeiro,
the latitude of which is nearly 23°, the temperature is
very high, and the atmosphere often excessively languid
and oppressive. " In the city," says Dr. Horner, of the
United States Naval Service (293), " the thermometer had
been 90 degrees in the shade. Night and day the tem-
perature in my state-room was 86°." The sluggishness

OF MALARIA. 23

of the air at Rio may be known by the name Nitheroy, or
Dead Sea, given by the aborigines to its harbor. The
climate is hot and moist; high and thickly wooded mount-
ains, the narrow entrance to the bay, and the numerous
islands impede the free passage of the wind." The site
of the town is low, the streets are indescribably filthy,
and the waters from the hills accumulate in the marshes
which nearly encompass the city. — (Hist, of Brazil.}
" The proximity of the ocean, the great size of the har-
bor, the great height of the land about it, the many
hills, narrow streets, and high temperature, keep Rio, al-
most without cessation, immersed in a heavy, sultry atmo-
sphere, rendered more disagreeable by want of cleanli-
ness, and the exhalations from the ravines and marshy
grounds in its rear." (Horner.)

Notwithstanding the presence of all the alleged mate-
riel for fevers, the American squadron, with a mean force
of 2,280 men, had, in 17 months, only 155 cases of fever,
of which the Concord alone, had 70 in a crew of 200,
when on a visit to the African coast. Not one died of
fever on the Brazil station. The British ship Warspite,
with a complement of 600 men, lay a whole year in the
harbor of Rio, and did not lose a man. In that time she
had but seven cases of fever.

Travelers who spent some time in Rio, and who pene-
trated to every part of the country, are equally warm in
their praise of the salubrity of the climate. "It was,"
says Walsh, the rainy season, a mortal period in other
tropical climates. For eight or nine hours a day, dur-
ing some weeks, I never had dry clothes on me, and
the clothes of which I divested myself at night, I put on
quite wet in the morning. When it did not rain, there
shone out in some places, a burning sun, and we went

24 THEORIES

smoking along, the wet exhaling by heat, as if we were
dissolving into vapor. Such weather in Africa, no hu-
man being could bear; but not so in Brazil; no one is
affected by those states of the atmosphere which are so
fatal elsewhere. It has, with some reason, therefore,
grown into a proverb, that it is a country where a phy-
sician cannot live, and yet where he never dies. There
was no doctor at S. Jose; but I was told there had been
two at S. Joao d'el Rey, and that one of them had left
because he could get no patients, and that the other had
for a long time, no patient but himself." — {p. 297, vol. ii.)

In Africa, under the same latitude, the rains scarcely
commence before the constitution begins to sink, even
without external exposure. According to Lind, the first
rains which fall in Guinea, are supposed to be the most
unhealthy ; and they have been known in forty-eight hours,
to render the leather of shoes quite mouldy and rotten.
Mungo Park observes, "that the rain had not commenced
three minutes, before many of the soldiers were affected
with vomiting, others fell asleep, and seemed as if intoxi-
cated. I felt a strong inclination to sleep during the
storm, and as soon as it was over, I fell asleep on the wet
ground, although I used every exertion to keep myself
awake. Twelve of the soldiers were ill next day.'1

"The thermometer," says Boyle, "is seldom above 81°,
or below 69° at this period, but the process of decompo-
sition proceeds so rapidly, that cloth and animal sub-
stances, such as leather, become putrid in a period hardly
credible."

On one of the Isles de Loss, at Sierra Leone, a small
force was soon destroyed, yet it is 'in the sea, only about
from half a mile to a mile in diameter, and formed of
granite, which rises to three hundred feet at its centre.

OF MALARIA. 25

It is apparently free from supposed causes of fever. There
is but one piece of arable ground, no sulphur, no calca-
reous rock, no marsh, and very little soil, not a swamp,
and the temperature seldom rises above 80°. — (Boyle, p.
16.)

Other examples almost without number, might be given
of the salubrity of places full of decomposing matter, and of
the insalubrity of others, where scarcely a vegetable is to
be seen. So that many reflecting men are now disposed
to abandon a theory, which cannot be rationally sustained
by a reference to facts, and which is shaken the more, the
more closely its pretensions are examined.

" We must be contented to place the explanation of the
cause of plague," says Fodere, "in the category of that of
all endemic maladies: that it is unknown."

" Malaria is a specific poison producing specific effects
on the human body, and is probably gaseous or aeriform.
Of its physical or chemical qualities, we really know no-
thing. ' ' — (Watson . )

According to Robert Armstrong, "we are utterly igno-
rant of the nature of this poison, and no two authors
agree respecting its constitution, the circumstances under
which it is generated, or its effects on the human body."
— (p. 70.) Again, "of the existence of miasm we have
no positive proof. It has never been obtained in an in-
sulated state, and consequently, we are totally ignorant
of its physical properties."

"If asked what is Malaria, I answer, I do not know."
(Caldwell.)

"Hence, physicians have been reduced to the necessity
of inferring the existence of hidden atmospheric influences,
as a cloak for ignorance." — (Tweedie.)

"Epidemic fever may be attributed to a mysterious
3

26 THEORIES

something r, an occult quality in the atmosphere." — (Med.
Cf-az., xvi. p. 515.)

But thinking men can scarcely rest satisfied with nega-
tive conclusions, and therefore, new explanations of the
cause of fever, succeed to the uprooted theories of the age
gone by.

The opinion which, next to that of "the malarial,"
seems to be most successfully sustained, refers intermit-
tents to the obvious conditions of the air, altered by heat
and moisture ; hot days followed by. cool evenings, dry
days, by dewy nights. The strongest argument for this
conclusion, rests on the fact, that such diseases prevail at
the season of greatest contrast, both as to heat and hu-
midity, and in places where extensive wet grounds aid in
the production of the strong vicissitudes.

As these phenomena are subject to observation, a close
examination may be made of the relative condition in
such respects, of the most healthy and the most deadly
localities. The result is not favorable to the theory based
on them, for many very salubrious places are remarkable
for the most striking manifestations of the supposed causes
of intermittents, while very sickly situations are not un-
frequently distinguished by the uniformity of the climate,
and the steadiness of the temperature and dew-point; nay,
two places, in all observable respects alike in elevation,
local relations, atmospheric phenomena and geological
structure, may differ totally in their degree of healthful-
ness. Even in the same place, the line of limitation of
disease-producing power, may be a common road, a nar-
row street, a stone wall, or a belt of woods; things which
could scarcely be supposed to affect, sensibly, the heat
and moisture, or their fluctuations.

But the most fatal argument against this theory is the

OF MALARIA. 27

fact that exposure for a single hour, at night, sometimes
produces an almost immediate attack in some persons,
whilst in others it creates a tendency to disease, not ac-
tively expressed until the lapse sometimes of months. It
will be acknowledged, too, that in that hour there may be
observed no unusual or contrasted conditions of the air,
either as to temperature or moisture.

On the western coast of Africa the sickness reaches its
maximum in the height of the rainy season, when the
diurnal temperature and moisture are almost invariable.
Whilst on the coast of Brazil the same meteoric pheno-
mena are perfectly innocuous.

Like every other theory, therefore, this o*e owes its
plausibility rather to the defects of a former hypothesis
than to its own value.

Daniel in England, and Gardiner in this country, have
adopted, with slight modification, an opinion of Ramman-
zani, that marsh exhalations owe their injurious activity
to sulphureous emanations. It is not enough to demon-
strate their destructiveness, that their presence in minute
quantity may be detected in paludal air; for the same
argument would equally favor the reference of marsh
fevers to any one of the many other gases or vapors found
in the same places. The innocuous qualities of these as
manifested elsewhere, is not less than those of the com-
pounds containing sulphur. Moreover, the sulphureous
localities of the sickly island of St. Lucia, are its only
salubrious places. — (Evans.) Cities, too, which abound in
sulphur-products, should not, according to this theory,
enjoy the immunity from agues for which they are every-
where noted.

Immediately around the sulphur works and factories for
making gunpowder and sulphuric acid, the vegetation and
the ague disappear together. Facts of the same import

28 THEORIES

might be almost indefinitely multiplied, but the task is
unnecessary.

Hoffman attributed malarious fevers to a lessened elas-
ticity of the air. His notion, obscurely conceived and 'in-
accurately stated, is only excusable because of the loose
philosophy of his day on every subject connected with at-
mospheric phenomena. Air is always equally elastic, and
any modification of its density, except by adulteration,
cannot be very partial for any length of time, so as to
create a permanent insalubrity. When adulterated by
excessive moisture or unusual gases, it is altered in com-
position, a cause of disease much more intelligible than
that of mojdification merely of density.

Particular gases have also been supposed to exert ma-
larious influence : Carbonic acid, nitrogen, cyanogen, car-
buretted hydrogen, phosphuretted hydrogen, ammonia and
all the imaginable effluvia from decomposing organic com-
pounds, have had, each, its advocate. As yet, however,
no one has been able to show that marshy or insalubrious
places abound most, or peculiarly, in such emanations;
nor has it been made even probable that any one of these
can, or ever did produce an ague ; while we know that in
the busy haunts of non-malarial districts, the arts produce
indefinitely diversified decompositions and emanations both
animal and vegetable, with wonderful impunity to artisans.

The great difficulties in the way of other theories have
induced some authors to suppose that the emanations pro-
ductive of fevers result from the action on water of living
vegetables, or of vegetables not dead but dying. Others
have found more astringent vegetables in hot than in cold
climates, and have conjectured that some combination of
animal matter with tannin constituted malaria. Not yet
satisfied with conjectures, ft few presume that the decom-

OF MALARIA. 29

position merely of certain vegetables, forms or diversifies
miasmata. " Thus," says McCulloch, "might the cruci-
form plants, OR THE TRIBE OF FUNGI, produce a malaria
differing from that poison as resulting from the gramine-
ous ones, or the consequence of the putrefaction of seeds
differ from that of leaves." Some French writers lay
great stress on the influence of narcotic vegetables in the
causation of malaria.

McCulloch, after a very elaborate citation of facts and
opinions, arrives at the indefinite conclusion "that the pre-
sence of vegetables or vegetable matter, in some mode or
form, is necessary to the extrication of malaria; while the
conclusion has sometimes been, that it is a production
formed between the living vegetable and water: more
generally that it is generated between that and the latter,
in some stage intermediate between life and absolute de-
composition', or, lastly, that it is the consequence of abso-
lute putrefaction."

I need scarcely say that the ifs and ands, and buts and
ors, in McCulloch's book, show the utter inefficiency of his
undefined cause, to explain the difficulties of this vexed
question. Nor is it necessary to offer objections to the
other theories cited, since no one has sustained them by
even plausible reasoning or pertinent facts. They are not
received or respected by the ' profession.'

The last of the theories to which I shall invite your at-
tention, are those of Drs. Ferguson and Robert Jackson.

The latter gentleman, once a firm believer in malaria as
usually understood, saw, during his West India service, so
many antagonistic phenomena as to incline him to the opi-
nion, that it is, sometimes at least, an emanation from liv-
ing vegetables, through the exuberance of organic life, the
excess of vital vegetable action. To use his own language,

3*

30 THEORIES

"It would appear that the materials of vegetation abound-
ing in excess, acted upon by a powerful cause, give out a
principle, which, not being expended on the growth and
nourishment of plants, is diffused to a certain extent in
the atmosphere, causing a derangement of such bodies as
come within the sphere of its action."

Mr. Doughty offers a modification of this sentiment, in
the supposition that by the separation of their nutrition
from the soil, especially when their growth is very rapid,
plants cause in the earth new combinations of rejected
elements, which thus become aerial, and poison the neigh-
boring atmosphere. As many highly malarious places
are barren, and naked of apparent vegetation, the theory
of Jackson falls at once to the ground. But if not, then
is there the additional difficulty of explaining by such a
cause, the existence of malarious diseases when the season
of active phenogamous vegetation has passed. It is also
a pure hypothesis unsustained by facts or reasoning.

The theory of Ferguson is received now by the profes-
sion more favorably than perhaps any other. It narrows
the malarial question down to this, that the only condi-
tions essential to the production of miasmata are soil and
water, especially a porous soil. And the only relation
. between these elements is, that of successive moisture and
dryness. Stating it in the words of Dr. Watson, of Lon-
don: " There is reason to believe that the flooding of
a porous earthy surface with water, and a subsequent dry-
ing of that surface, under a certain degree of heat, consti-
tute the sole or main conditions of the generation of the
poison."

If these are the sole conditions, only moisture can come
from the soil, for if anything else does, it must be a miasm,
and we revert to the old opinion of Lancisi, If only moist-

OF MALARIA. 31

ure is exhaled, why does it sometimes poison its subjects
in a single hour, or make an impression actively expressed
sometimes months afterwards? Ferguson has himself ad-
duced a fact irreconcilable with his theory, where the army
suffered in long droughts when at a distance from porous
and wet soils. His hypothesis is also in opposition to the
fact that in Africa the greatest mortality is during the
rains, when the earth is always drenched with water. On
the other hand, the shores of the Mediterranean are most
pestilential when a long drought has parched up the earth.

It would be a waste of time to even enumerate the theo-
ries of malaria, founded on the supposition of an unusual
disproportion of the ordinary atmospheric elements, such
as an excess or deficiency of oxygen or nitrogen, or car-
bonic acid, or water. Nor would it be of more use to cite
the electrical and magnetic theories of disease, since no
analysis of malarious atmospheres has revealed any defect
of its elements or of its imponderable constituents. Not a
fact sustains any of these opinions, and observations ex-
tensively made thoroughly falsify them.* Whatever of
change from such causes is observable in malarious places,
must be ascribed to their power to excite, not to pre-
dispose.

The only theoretic view of malaria to which I incline,
is that which refers marsh fevers, and some of the epi-
demic diseases, to a living organic cause, capable of repro-
duction by germs, as is alleged of contagious diseases;

* M. Peltier, by constant observations, found the clouds in 1835 almost
always positive, in 1836 generally neutral or negative, yet no marked dif-
ference in health was observed in those years.

Since these lectures were written, Sir James Murray has defended with
much ability, the electrical theory of malarious and epidemic diseases. —
(Lancet, Oct. 1848.)

32 THEORIES

but unlike the latter in this, that the germs are not repro-
duced by the organism of the sick, but exteriorly to, and
independently of, the human body. In other words, that
as the germs of contagious diseases are reproduced in
the body, the germs productive of malarious and other
non-contagious diseases are elaborated and re-elaborated
out of the body, and independently of its agency. One
is the product of person, the other of place. This notion
is sustained by the fact that organic azotized substances
are the only things detected in marsh air or dew, which
can possibly affect the health injuriously.

Although I approve of the reference of malarious dis-
eases to the causation by organic germs, I am far from
being satisfied with the animalcular direction taken by all
who have elaborated a theory on this foundation. Hither-
to it has been so feebly sustained by proofs, as to have
at no time received general favor from the profession,
although supported by some eminent men in almost every
period of medical history. The chief objections to the
animalcular theory are: 1st. That it has never been shown
that animalcules are poisonous in any way. 2d. That
none of the difficulties of this puzzling subject are thus re-
moved. 3d. That the assumption is hypothetical at first,
and does not in the progress of an examination become at
any time more demonstratively probable, or logically
acceptable. 4th. But the strongest objection is founded
on the superior probability of the vegetable branch of the
organic theory, by which I hope to show that very much
of the obscurity of this subject may be dissipated. This
last objection will, as we advance, rise into more remark-
able prominency.

It is painful to be thus compelled to abandon the inge-
nious theories of our fathers, built up so elaborately and so

OF MALARIA. 33

industriously ; to brush away the whole labor of the lives
of many eminent men, and to reflect upon the time and
talent lavished wastefully upon mere day-dreams. We
cannot also fail to perceive the great fallibility of human
opinion, as thus exemplified, nor can we avoid the dread
that we ourselves may have to mourn hereafter, over the
unproductive labors of our own lives, or leave to our
children the thankless office of removing our worthless
mental rubbish, to make way for perhaps not more sub-
stantial edifices. Be this as it may, we derive from the
review the useful lesson of philosophic humility, which
teaches us to state or receive new doctrines with becoming
hesitation, and to bring them into practical application
with prudent caution, and then only when sustained by
the prolonged observation of many persons in many
places, and at various times.

34 HABITUDES

LECTUKE II.

1

THE CHARACTER, GROWTH, MINUTENESS, DIFFUSION, ALTERA-
TION BY CLIMATE, AND AUTUMNAL PROFUSION OF THE

«•

FUNGI.

IN offering to your attention and consideration a theory
of malaria, I profess to do no more than present a review
of the phenomena which seem to render it probable, with-
out supposing, that, on so difficult and important a sub-
ject, I can produce, in your minds, the thorough convic-
tion, which, nothing short of a positive demonstration,
could bring home to my own. Not thoroughly convinced
myself, I can only be excused for occupying your time,
by the belief that the theory I am about to offer, is not
only very plausible, but is associated with agreeable and
useful collateral inquiries. If we should not discover at
the end of our journey, the truth, the search after which
has lured us to the path of observation, we shall enjoy,
at least, beautiful scenery by the way, and sometimes
pluck a flower, and sometimes find a gem.

Standing, at St. George's, in Delaware, more than

twenty years ago, upon the bottom of what had been, a

short time before, a mill-dam, I found around me the un-

/ decayed stumps of trees which had been, for one hundred

-vj and seventeen years, submerged in fresh water. Two or

OF THE FUNGI. 35

three years thereafter, I again visited the spot, and saw
that these stumps, no longer wet, but damp, had been en-
tirely disintegrated by the dry rot, and that they crumbled
in the handling. In the handful of dust which I picked up,
I found innumerable spores of what I supposed to be
Polyporus Destructor, and Merulius Vastator, cryptoga-
mous plants, whose active existence had been bought at the
expense of the old stumps. In a moment I conceived that,
perhaps, the miasm, so much dreaded in that place, might
be, directly or indirectly, the product of these urgers on
of a more rapid decomposition. It was a loose thought at
the time; but it gave me a disposition to collect the phe-
nomena which might prove or disprove the agency in the
generation of malaria, of living, not of dead plants.

A part of my collection I now offer you. In doing so,
I shall present only the affirmative side of the question,
believing that no one else is likely immediately to sustain
so revolutionary an opinion, whilst professional emulation,
habitual prejudice, and even love of truth, will subject it
to a sufficiently rigorous opposition. You have, therefore,
due notice of the guarded manner in which you are to re-
ceive my ex parte observations, a notice which I cheer-
fully give, for I have much confidence in the force of my
subject, and do not love my theory well enough to wish
its establishment at the expense of truth or reason. Take
it, then, for what I may show to be its worth.

Just on the line which faintly marks the division be-
tween the animal and vegetable kingdoms, lie the lichens,
the algse and the fungi. These cryptogamous plants are
so closely allied to each other, as to be indistinctly sepa-
rated by naturalists; some of whom include under one
division, species which are found differently disposed of
by other phytologists. Lmdley, following the great con-

36 HABITUDES

tinental cryptogamists, admits that the location, rather
than the structure of these plants, affords a final distinc-
tion, and that, while the lichens live on dry and scanty
soils, and algae in water, salt or fresh, the fungi occupy
1 the intermediate place, loving a damp and unsound or
loaded atmosphere, and feeding on organized matter, the
vitality of which is gone, or going.

In all of them, the element is a very minute cell, not
often distinguishable when isolated, from the elementary
cells of, even animal organisms. Indeed, some of the con-
fervas, obviously vegetable in one state of existence, as
the arthrodiese, offer in another, the plainest character of
animal life; supposing that animal life is to be inferred
from motions indicating a well-marked power of volition.
Some of the oscillarias have an oscillatory movement ex-
tremely active and perceptible, and the ulva labyrinthi-
formis and anabaina, with all the other conditions of a
vegetable, have, according to Vauquelin and Chaptal, all
the chemical characters of an animal. We have, there-
fore, chemically constituted plants with animal motions
and volition; and those of animal composition, with the
exclusive habitudes and structure of vegetables.

All plants are liable to curious and often great altera-
tions by climate, soil, and season; but the dubious beings
I am now describing, undergo such astonishing modifica-
tions, even by the slightest causes, as to perplex, by their
morphology, the sagacity of the best informed naturalists.
They, at least the simplest of them, seem to have so little
inherent tendency to the assumption of form and nutri-
tion, as to take their shape and products almost exclu-
sively from the hand of accident. "One might call it,"
says Lindley, "a provisional creation, waiting to be or-
ganized, and then assuming different forms, according to

OF THE FUNGI. 37

the nature of the corpuscles, which penetrate it, or are
developed among it."

For these reasons, the lowest of the vegetable groups,
the fungi, are, in the opinion of some naturalists, equally
distinct from plants and animals, mere fortuitous develop-
ments of vegeto-animal matter, called into varied action
by special conditions, or by combinations of heat, light, and
moisture, and capable of existing and of being propagated,
under circumstances apparently the most contrasted.

Of all vegetable substances the fungi are the most
highly animalized. Like animals, they disengage car-
bonic acid and imbibe a quantity of oxygen ; nay, some
of them extricate hydrogen, and even nitrogen. Their
chemical composition also allies them to animal struc-
tures. They yield the vegetable products, resin, sugar,
gum, fungic acid, and a number of saline compounds;
but they also afford the adipocire, albumen, and osma-
zome of the animal kingdom. The basis of these plants is
fungin, a tasteless but highly nutritious substance, wrhite,
soft, and doughy. It yields, by nitric acid, nitrogen,
hydrocyanic, oxalic, and some other acids, and fatty sub-
stances, like wax, tallow, and, in some instances, oil.

Of the cryptogamous plants, the fungi are distinguished
for their diffusion and number, for their poisonous pro-
perties, and their peculiar season of growth, for the mi-
nuteness of their spores, and for their love of darkness and
tainted soils, and heavy atmospheres. While, then, I shall
present their claims to be considered as the principal
cause of fevers, I do not mean to exclude the occasional
agency of other cryptogamous vegetables ; and beg, when
using the convenient word fungus, to be understood as
not entirely denying the agencies of cognate beings of
4

38 HABITUDES

kindred subdivisions, which are hardly distinguishable
from it.

Here and there among writers, ancient and modern, a
hint is thrown out, that, possibly, plants of the lowest
orders may cause malarious fevers ; and in some countries,
as Spain, for example, even the populace believe that the
fungi cause fevers. For, to the practice of eating mush-
rooms at a sickly season, the Estramadurans ascribed the
febrile diseases by which the British army suffered so
severely.

A treatise was published at Vienna, in 1775, by J. S.
Michael Leger, " concerning the mildew, considered as the
principal cause of epidemic disease among the cattle, &c."
" The mildew producing the disease is that which dries and
burns the grass and leaves. It falls usually in the morn-
ing, particularly after a thunder storm. Its poisonous
quality, which does not continue above twenty-four hours,
never operates but when it is swallowed immediately after
its falling."

" Should the too bold notion of Nees Von Eisenbeck,
that fungi of the most minute forms have their origin in
the higher regions of air, and, descending to the earth,
produce spots and stains, be confirmed, these signacula
would have a much more important connection with epi-
demics than can be otherwise conceded to them." — Hecker,
p. 205.

Miiller thinks (Archives, 1841), that if vegetable cells
were to be seminia morborum, they could scarcely be mi-
croscopically distinguished from the primordial formative
cells of our own tissues.

The theory, therefore, which I now offer, is not entirely
new. Nay, the learned microscopists, who are making,
on the nature and action of elementary cells, such im-

OF THE FUNGI. 39

mense contributions to our STORE OF FACTS, not only pre-
pare us for such a theoretic step, but actually, by pregnant
allusions, lead the way. It is, then, not so much -a rash
generalization, in advance of the opinion and knowledge
of the age, as a very natural result of that knowledge
collected and classified. It is an expression, if not of the
sentiment, at least of the science of the present era.

Under this impression, I undertake the adventurous
duty of developing a theoretic result, not expecting to do
more than obtain for it, at present, a hearing and an ex-
amination, since its demonstration, if ever completed,
must exact, for years, the enlightened and patient toils of
many philosophers. " There never is," says Bischoff,
"an important and comprehensive discovery made at once;
the elements of it are generally obtained from different
quarters, and from all these truth at last results."

Imitating the natural philosophers, I have constructed
a theory, not to be esteemed devoutly true, but as, in the
present state of knowledge, the most perfect explanation
of the known phenomena of the case; and as the least
exposed to the many objections easily brought against any
other hypothesis.

It may be thought that the cause assigned is not ade-
quate to the rapid production of the effect. Can a mi-
nute vegetable, however distributed, contaminate the air
of a large marsh or field, in the course of a few minutes
or hours ? When we remember how minute a quantity
of a reproductive organic virus is, in other cases, neces-
sary to the infection of a proper subject, we might leave
the argument to that defence alone; but I think there is
a better one, in the wonderful growth and ready diffusion
of the plants to whose nocturnal potency I am inclined to
ascribe malarious fevers.

40 HABITUDES

A mushroom growth is proverbial in every language.
In a single night, under favorable circumstances, leather,
or moist vegetable matter, may be completely covered
with mould. Of the more minute fungi, some species
pass through their whole existence in a few minutes, from
the invisible spore to the perfect plant. Lind says, that
the first rains in Guinea have been known to make the
leather of shoes quite mouldy and rotten in forty-eight
hours; showing that the plants which disorganize the
leather must have drawn their nutrition, even from its
heart, in that time, and, by many successive generations,
extended themselves over its total surface. Mr. Berkeley
describes a Polyporus squamosus which, in three weeks,
acquired a circumference of seven feet five inches, and a
weight of thirty-four pounds. The Polyporus frondosus
described by John Bapt. Porta, sometimes transcends a
weight of twelve pounds in a few days.

The Sovista giganteum, on the authority of Carpenter,
the eminent physiologist, has been known to increase in a
single night, from a mere point to the size of a large
gourd, estimated to. contain four thousand seven hundred
millions of cells; a number which, when counted at the
rapid rate of 300 per minute, or five per second, would
take the whole time of one person, night and day , for three
hundred years. A square mile contains upwards of
3,000,000 square yards, or 27,000,000 square feet, so
that a single Bovista giganteum may present, at evening,
an almost invisible single cell, and yet place before morn-
ing, nearly 1,800 such cells in' every square foot of a
square mile.

Notwithstanding the wondrous productions of a single
individual of one species, Fries, the Swedish naturalist,
observed not less than two thousand species, within the

OF THE FUNGI. 41

compass of a square furlong. The same author tells us,
that he has counted above 10,000,000 of sporules in a
single individual of the Reticularia maxima, so minute
as to look like smoke as they rose in the air.

Webster, when writing of the malignant fever of 1795,
informs us that sound potatoes from market perished in
his cellar, in thirty-six hours; and we know now how
they ^perished. It was a parasitic death.

In the Philosophical Transactions, Lond. (vol. iv. p.
308, Abridg.), it is stated, that a green mould attacked a
split melon, and took three hours to sprout, and six to
ripen and produce, and let fall new seeds.

At New York, the pestilential season of 1798, Webster
says, that he saw a cotton garment covered with dark gray-
colored spots of mildew in a single night, and that such
events were then and there common.

I might multiply examples of the rapid growth and ex-
tensive diffusion of fungi, which, like the lowest classes of
animals, seem to have a power of development and propa-
gation inversely as their magnitude. The more minute
the plants, the more rapid their multiplication ; until, as
they descend to those of the smallest scale, a microscope
shows them in even visible growth. Nothing astonishes
one more than to see in the bottom of a watch glass a drop
of yeast swelling up, as the torula cerevisise unfolds itself,
and exhibits a forest of fungi, where but a few minutes
before, only a spore or two were visible.

"The family of the funguses," says Badham, "is im-
mense. Merely catalogued and described, there are suf-
ficient to fill an octavo volume of four hundred pages of
close print, of British species alone. Altogether there
cannot be less than five thousand recognized species at

present known, and each year adds new ones to the list.

4*

42 HABITUDES

For the single mushroom that we eat, how many hundreds
there be that prey upon us in return. To enumerate but
a few and those of the microscopic kinds (there are some
which the arms could scarcely embrace) ; the mucor mu-
cedo that spawns upon our dried preserves ; the ascophora
mucedo that makes our bread mouldy ; the uredo segetum,
that burns Ceres out of her corn-fields; the uredo rubigo,
whose rust is still more destructive ; and the puccinia gra-
minis, whose voracity sets corn-laws and farmers at defi-
ence, are all funguses. So is the gray monilia that rots,
and then fattens upon our fruits ; and the mucor herbario-
rum, that destroys the careful gleanings of the pains-taking
botanist. When our beer becomes mothery, the mother of
that mischief is a fungus. If pickles acquire a bad taste,
if ketchup turns ropy and putrefies, funguses have a finger
in it all ! Their reign stops not here ; they prey upon
each other; they even select their victims! There is the
myrothecium viride, which will only grow upon dry aga-
rics. The mucor clirysospermus attacks the flesh of a
particular Boletus; the sclerotium cornutum which visits
some other moist mushrooms in decay. There are some
xylomas that will spot the leaves of the maple, and some,
those of the willow, exclusively. The naked seeds of some
are found burrowing between the opposite surfaces of
leaves; some love the neighborhood of burned stubble,
and charred wood; some visit the sculptor in his studio.
The racodium of the low cellar festoons its ceilings, shags
its walls, and keeps our wines in bonds, while the geastrum
has been found suspended on the very highest pinnacle of
St. Paul's. The close cavities of nuts afford concealment
to some species ; others like leeches stick to the bulbs of
plants and suck them dry; these pick timber to pieces, as
men pick oakum; nor do they confine their selective ra-

OF THE FUNGI. 43

vages to plants alone; they attach themselves to animal
structures and destroy animal life ; the oxygena equina has
a particular fancy for the hoofs of horses, and for the
horns of cattle, sticking to these alone; the belly of a tro-
pical fly is liable, in autumn, to break out into vegetable
tufts of fungous growth ; and the caterpillar to carry about
a clavaria larger than himself. The fungous disease called
muscardine destroys many silkworms, and the vegetating
wasp, of which everybody has heard, is only another mys-
terious blending of vegetable with insect-life. Funguses
visit the wards of our hospitals and grow out of the pro-
ducts of surgical diseases. Where then are they not to
be found?' Do they not abound like Pharaoh's plagues
everywhere? Is not their name legion, and their province,
ubiquity?"

An ingenious friend proposes as an objection to my
theory, that as malarious fevers are specifically the same
everywhere, and as the plants of* temperate differ totally
from those of tropical, regions, how are we to account for
their identity ? The intermittent is a native of Russia and
Sweden, while it is also an endemic of the coast of Guinea,
and of the banks of the Orinoco.

The answer given is, that of all plants of the same spe-
cies, only the fungi are known to be natural inhabitants of
the various climates of the earth; for to use the words of
Mr. Roques, " ive find mushrooms in every climate." We
saw on a piece of damp leather, at the Cape of Good Hope,
the same mucor mucedo that penetrates its tissue at Sierra
Leone, or St. Petersburgh. Like man, the fungi generally
live in any climate, though there are among them some
that infest only the steppes of Tartary, and others that
revel solely on the sands of Zahara. This ubiquity is
one of their most peculiar qualities.

44 HABITUDES

But why is it, then, if the same fungi create diseases in
Lapland and Senegal, that there is so fatal a difference in
the intensity of them at these two places? As the fungi
of a poisonous character possess acrid and narcotic proper-
ties, it is scarcely necessary to consistency to presume
that the same species are everywhere the cause of mala-
rious fevers. Yet, if that were an imperative supposition,
it would not embarrass the question materially, because
naturalists affirm, that the poisonous cryptogami are ren-
dered yet more poisonous by increased temperature and
moisture. The amanita muscaria, only narcotic or intoxi-
cating in Siberia, and used there for the purpose of agree-
able exhilaration, is mainly irritating in France and Italy,
and therefore, there, a very deadly poison to the mucous
surface and nervous system.

We have an analogous example of the poison-enforcing
power of climate in tEe fact, that the common hemp evolves
a strong narcotic, in the tropics, while no such excretion
is thrown out from it in temperate regions. In the Crimea,
the conium maculatum is used as an esculent vegetable.
The tendency to cause moulds so intensely expressed in
hot climates is seconded by the aggravation of their ac-
tivity when produced. It is curious too, that tropical
regions excite only the more minute forms in a greater
degree, which according to many writers are most poison-
ous. " Those that are most injurious, are generally of the
microscopic kinds." — (Badham.) If too, the excess of rain
may make poisonous, in our climate, even the esculent
mushrooms, what may we not expect from the influence
exerted upon the noxious fungi by the prolonged and
heavy rains of the tropics !

May we not find a difficulty in believing that the spo-
rules of the fungi are absorbable into the circulation?

OF THE FUNGI. 45

Their volume, or the selective appetency of the mouths
of the absorbents and the lacteals, or of the pores of the
venous radicles, may offer insuperable impediments to
their entrance. The chyle globules are about two-thirds
of the size of blood globules in man, and they are sup-
posed to be readily absorbed by the lacteals. Fries states
that he has seen cryptogamous sporules of the size of
TU/00 o^ns °f an inch, which would give them a volume one-
third of that of blood globules, and two-thirds only of that
of chyle globules. In examining, when mixed together,
blood globules and the spori of various minute fungi, I have
often seen the latter, in line along the disk of the former,
wrhen it required fourteen of them to subtend its long diame-
ter. They were, therefore, at least ten times as small as the
chyle-globules. So much for size. As to the selective
power of the lacteals, we know that they suffer very many
and various poisons to pass into the circulation, and that,
in this respect, they are much less particular than our
fathers imagined. Besides this, we know that fungous
growths, both in man and the lower animals, have been
found in places, to which their germs could have gained
access only by the circulation, or by imbibition. There
is, therefore, no good reason for doubting that the spores
of fungi find their way to the channels of the circulation,
as do the cells of exanthematous diseases, and the virus of
syphilis.

The cause of the uniform excess of malarious diseases at
the end of summer and in autumn has been an interesting
subject of discussion and wonder. Boot, in his life of
Armstrong, observes that, "the most remarkable circum-
stance connected with the diseases supposed to arise from
malaria, is their general prevalence in autumn, in every
country where they occur." Even the yellow fever of places

46 HABITUDES

in which it is an ordinary endemic, is not an exception to
this law, for Baron Humboldt says that, at Vera Cruz,
where "May and June are hotter than September and Oc-
tober, the latter months greatly exceed the former in the
number and vigor of the fevers."*

If mere vegetable decomposition were the cause of such
fevers, we should find them most active in May and
June, when, after the previous autumnal death, and the
disintegrating effects of winter frosts, or soaking rains, the
warmth and moisture of spring and early summer rapidly
decompose the softened textures, to feed the tender spon-
gioles of the swelling vegetation. The great chemists, heat,
light, and moisture, are then most active; and the dead
relics of the former year, prepared by time, frost and rain,
are ready for the process of decomposition, as the electri-
cal and vital agencies of the countless and thread-like
radices open up their intendered store-houses of nutrition.
Although, therefore, almost every one has supposed that
the autumn is the season of the greatest decomposition,
that process is really conducted in the spring and early
summer with a tenfold energy, as may be easily recog-
nized by the extraordinary smell of the earth Sfter a shower
at this season.

Malarious diseases, therefore, are not probably the effect
of ordinary vegetable decomposition; for they occur most
when that is not at, or near to, its maximum.

Everywhere they abound, when the general vegetation
has just passed through its great orgasm. But there

* The regular return and continuance of this fever in the months of
July, August and September, every year, more or less since its iirst appear-
ance in these Islands — (Jas. Clark, Dominica.)

Yellow Fever is most active in September, when the temperature has
fallen much below that of July and August. — (Wm. Currie.)

OF THE FUNGI. 47

is another and special vegetation, which, whatever may
be the climate, has its spring time and summer in the
autumnal season of the year. On the exhausted debris,
and the varied exuvise of plants, weeds and grasses ; from
root to leaf ; under ground and above ground ; feeds a race
of vegetables which wait for their food to the latest period
of the season of heat, and then flourish most when the more
perfect forms have completed their annual task, and sub-
mit to the inroads of these Goths of pnytology.

Governed in a great measure by the phenomena imme-
diately around him, an observer, seeing the period of sick-
ness succeeding to the active vegetative season, assigns the
cause to the climatic events which then ordinarily arise.
Thus African writers believe that the rains are the imme-
diate producers of malaria, for they descend in torrents in
July, when the vegetation of that torrid clime is on the
decline. On the other hand, the Sardinian supposes that
the sickness of his hot and dry autumn, is the result
of the heat and aridity, and that droughts after rains, and
not rains after droughts, cause his miasmata.

In the insular West Indies, there are heavy rains in
August and September, which are sickly months; whereas,
the pestilential season of Demarara is also in August and
September, although they are there the dry months.

Egypt, although placed in the northern hemisphere, en-
joys a climate almost the reverse of that of other countries
similarly situated. During the summer scarcely any rain
descends. At Cairo there are but four or five showers in
a year, and in Upper Egypt only one or two. Near the
sea, showers are not quite so rare. Everything, therefore,
is, in the hot months, brown and dry and hard — dews
rarely descend, and the parched land lies locked up in a
barren drought. About the first of June the Nile begins

48 HABITUDES

to rise rapidly. Its channel becomes full early in the
month, and, at the summer solstice, it pours its waters over
its usual barriers. The country is covered with water
during the hot summer and autumn, and there is no vege-
tation, and no disease.

At the winter solstice, the spring time of Egypt begins,
and while nature leaps into amazing activity, the husband-
man enters on his annual labor of sowing and planting.
Towards the end of January, oranges and citrons blossom,
and the sugar cane is cut down. In February all the fields
are verdant: the sowing of rice begins, the first barley
crop is harvested, and cabbages, cucumbers and melons
ripen. The sickly season of Egypt should, therefore, on
my view, commence in the winter or spring, and accord-
ingly, here as elsewhere, the ravages of disease follow the
decline of active vegetation, and the plague begins. In
1834, the deaths by plague in December were 109; Janu-
ary, 1835, 151; February, 821; March, 4329; April,
1897; May, 321; June, 41 cases. About St. John's day,
the country being covered with water, the plague ceases.

We see, then, that the insalubrity of a place has the most-
constant relation to the habits of the living vegetation.
Whatever may be the temperature or humidity, the most
unhealthy period of the year is, in any given locality, that
when the phanerogamous vegetation has completed its an-
nual task of growth, and flowering, and fruitage, and feels
the weakness of an exhausting effort, and when to triumph
as it were over a worn out foe, the cryptogamous plants
plunder and destroy it.

A reference to books, whose authors did not perhaps
even dream of this theory of fever, shows, that the fungi
are active chiefly in the end of summer and in autumn.
Dr. Badham observes, that, "A wet autumn is generally*

OF THE FUNGI. 49

found to be exceedingly prolific in these plants.'' This in
England, but in Italy the very scenery is beautified by
the number, variety, and coloring of these vegetables.
" Well may their sudden apparition surprise us, for not
ten days since, the waters were all out, and only three or
four nights back peals of thunder rattled against the case-
ments ; and now, behold the meadows, by natural magic,
studded with countless fairy rings of every diameter,
formed of such species as grow upon the ground, while
the chestnut and the oak are teeming with a new class of
fruits, that had no previous blossoming, many of which
had already attained their full growth." " These are the
fungus tribe, a new class of objects which have sprung
up suddenly and now beset our path on every side, beauti-
ful as the fairest flowers, and more useful than most of
tire" fruits." "The extremely limited time during which
funguses are to be found, their fragility, their infinite di-
versity, their ephemeral existence, these too add to the
interest of an autumnal walk." "In such rambles he
will see what I have, this autumn, myself witnessed, whole
hundred weights of rich wholesome diet rotting under
trees; woods teeming with food, and not one hand to
gather it."

Herat and Lens say: "It is usually in autumn that
they (fungi) are developed in humid places, where the air
is thick and unwholesome, with a rapidity that has passed
into a proverb."

In the Cyclop. Amer. we learn that the best time for
gathering mushrooms is August and September, and Mil-
ler's Horticultural Dictionary remarks that September is
the chief season of their growth.

In the beautiful work of Mons. J. Roques, on the poi-
sonous and edible fungi, is the following language: " We
5

50 HABITUDES OE THE FUNGI.

find mushrooms in every climate. A very large propor-
tion of them is met with only towards the end of summer
and in autumn. Heavy rains, and unseasonably early
heat, may force them in May or June; but they are then
never so perfect. Thunder-storms with rain, develop them
prodigiously."

Of one hundred and five species of fungi treated of by
M. Roques, only one grows at all seasons; four in spring;
one in spring and autumn ; five at the very end of sum-
mer; eight exclusively in summer; twenty-eight in sum-
mer and autumn; and sixty-two exclusively in autumn.
Of the one hundred and five, therefore, ninety-two are
active in autumn, and thirty-six in summer.

Were this essay not necessarily very long, it would not
be uninteresting to inquire, in how marked a degree the
proportion of diseases to seasons, corresponds with that of
the above table: but most of you know already that the
relation is remarkable enough, since the growth of the
fungi and of malarious fevers is generally in the order di-
rectly of autumn — summer — spring — winter.

THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT AND IN EPIDEMICS. 51

LECTURE III.

THE FUNGI ARE ACTIVE ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY AT NIGHT,
AND ABOUND DURING THE PREVALENCE OF EPIDEMICS
AND EPIZOOTICS.

THE most common Malarious diseases are not produci-
ble by exposure in sickly places, during the day time.
Whatever may be their cause, it seems to have activity
almost solely at night. Darkness appears to be essential
to~either its existence or its power. As this position is
not generally acknowledged, I may be pardoned for going
into some detail on it.

Dr. James Lind cites the following case. — The Phoenix
sloop-of-war of forty guns, was employed in 1766 on the
coast of Africa; where also was the Hound on the same
duty. Both vessels, after a healthful cruise, put into the
African island of St. Thomas, notorious for its pestilen-
tial character. Here, of the crew of the Phoenix, slept on
shore, seven officers and servants, while three midship-
men, five seamen, and one boy, were also employed on a
watering party, which detained them on land at night.
Of these sixteen persons, only two survived the malignant
fever which followed. The remainder of the crew of two
hundred and eighty men, were permitted to go ashore in
the day time, where the men rambled about at pleasure,
followed field sports, and washed their soiled clothing.
Not one of these ivas attacked with any kind of fever, and

52 THE FUNGI PEEVAIL AT NIGHT

before her return home, the ship lost only one man, and
he died of the effects of a blow on the head. The crew of
the other vessel, the Hound, were permitted to visit the
shore only in the day time, although no other restriction
seems to have been laid on them. Of these, not one died
of fever.

Another equally remarkable case is given by Lind. In
1766, some French Protestants settled in a paludal part
of Florida, where finally most of them perished. On
some business, they were visited by eight gentlemen, more
healthfully seated at a considerable distance, who spent
one night there. On the following day, seven other per-
sons from the same place, paid them a visit; but left their
district before night-fall. Of the first party, every one
was attacked with intermittent fever, and two died ; while
of the other party, not one individual suffered in the
slightest degree.

The judicious Dr. Hunter, of Jamaica, relates cases of
nocturnal damage of the same character. In one instance,
out of sixty or seventy men sent ashore to water, not an
individual escaped fever, while the rest of the crew eji-
joyed good health.

Doctor James Johnson, in treating of this subject, re-
marks that, while cruising or at anchor between Batavia
and Malacca, his crew lost but one man by fever, who had
not spent the night ashore; whereas, almost every one
who slept even a single night at Edam, died. No ill
effects were experienced from going on shore in the day
time. Even being awake during the night when on land,
did not protect the seamen from danger *

Tratter (Med. Naut. i. 456), says, when speaking of

* I do not find this remark endorsed by any other writer, but my elo-
quent friend, Prof. Dickson, confirmed it to me in a recent conversation on
the subject.

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 53

the danger of exposure to the land-air at night, "every
man who slept ashore died, and the rest of the ship's com-
pany remained remarkably healthy."

On the authority of Surgeon Allen, we learn, that at
Zanzibar, all who slept on board ship, escaped; every
victim seen or heard of, had passed at least one night on
shore. The captain and forty men from a French cor-
vette, who passed a night on land, were attacked by the
coast fever, and not one survived.

Doctor Evans, writing from the unhealthy island of St.
Lucia, observes, that during the day, "the sportsman wades
through the stagnant waters and mangrove bushes, which
cover the surface of West India fens, with comparative im-
punity; but long before the sun has disappeared, he places
himself beyond the reach of their poisonous effluvia."

Mr. Webb, Inspector of Hospitals, stated before a com-
mittee of the British House of Commons, that the men
who remained on board the ships in the noxious cli-
mate of Walcheren, were extremely healthy, although they
went ashore to lathe and exercise daily, but never remained
on land at night. Yet it was in that very place that the
English army, encamped or lodged on shore, was almost
annihilated by malignant intermittents.

Robert Armstrong says, that of the crew of the ship of
war Monarch, employed to collect at Xanthus, specimens
of ancient art, the large body of men employed on shore
were, without exception, attacked with remittent fever, and
twenty-four of them died; whilst those who remained on
board of the ship were, to a man, exempted from fever.

The inhabitants of our southern country are fully aware
of the important truth I have just illustrated, for they
avoid as a deadly poison, the night air of malarious re-
gions, but visit them and travel through them fearlessly,

5*

54 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

during the day time. The precincts of the city of Charles-
ton are especially pestilential, and the country fever, as
it is called, is remarkably fatal to the residents, of towns
and of the upper country. To sleep one night in this dis-
trict, puts in peril the life of the unacclimated; but no one
believes that the most prolonged visit by day is attended
with any danger.

In Major Tulloch's masterly report on the health of the
military and naval service, he observes that, " the sick-
ness of the shore very rarely extends to the shipping,
though only a few hundred yards from the land. The
visits of sailors to the shore by day, did not produce dis-
ease. In the Ceylon service, the mortality of the marine
force by fever, was 3 in 1000, of the military, 24.6, — or
more than eight times as great.

The frigate Potomac, on a three years' cruise, visited
some of the most insalubrious stations of tropical regions,
and yet lost only 26 men, of whom not one died of fever.
Dr. Foltz accounts for this happy exemption from mala-
rious diseases, by stating that his men were never per-
mitted to remain ashore during the night.

During three voyages into tropical regions, I always ad-
vised the adherence to the safe rule of compelling the
seamen to return to the ship at night; and although we
watered in places notorious for their insalubrity, and emi-
nently destructive to parties which ventured to remain
ashore at night, we did not lose one man by fevers of any
kind. In some of these places, the water was stagnant
and irritating at first, and caused inflammation of the skin
of the legs of the waterers. The heavy odour of the rank
vegetation, and the damp feel of the air among shallow
pools, where myriads of insects sported, gave lively evi-
dence of a pestilential locality. Besides that? the sickly

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 55

and bloated looks of the white inhabitants of some of these
places, evinced the presence of active malaria.

In vain do we search in the works on received theories,
for the cause of this curious influence of night. It is in
the day time that evaporation goes on most rapidly, and
that chemical changes produced .both by heat and light,
are in most active operation. The w^ater is warmer, the
common vegetation more vivid, and the great chemist, the
sun, is urging on the processes of the laboratory of nature.
This is of course admitted by many wrriters, some of whom
confess manfully the difficulty of this part of their subject,
while others suppose that the miasm evolved during the day,
descends at night. Were this really so, it would scarcely
account for the extraordinary difference of disease-produc-
ing power, between the night and the day; but when we
consider how currents of air must sweep away the diurnal
emanations, and how late in the night it is before the
earth becomes cool enough to detain its proximate atmo-
sphere, we can with difficulty admit this mode of explana-
tion.

It has been also said that the baneful effect is due to
the great change of temperature which follows the advent
of night, by which moisture is precipitated by the air, and
the human frame is chilled and sickened. As there is in
the most unhealthy regions (coast of Africa), the slightest
diurnal change, as rocky islets (De Loss in Africa), are
sometimes most pestilential : as a wall, a road, or a screen
of trees, sometimes separates a bad from a good locality,
and as no such meteorological differences appear to explain
the vicissitudes of the health of different years, we must
reject such causes, except as excitants of the power of some
poison yet to be discovered.

But when we observe the extraordinary tendency of

56 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

fungous vegetables to develop their power only at night,
we detect another analogy between malaria and the fungi.
In vain do we search in the latter part of a day for young
mushrooms. The early riser finds them in their prime and
abundance. A field which at evening exhibited not a sin-
gle plant, is often whitened by their little umbrellas in the
morning. "It is well known," writes Comstock, "that
this tribe of plants springs up almost everywhere, espe-
cially among decaying substances, and that thousands may
be seen in the morning^ where none existed the evening
before."

Even the more durable kinds of fungi appear to add
during the day little to their bulk, preferring to grow
almost solely under the eye of night ; so that these ano-
malous vegetables not only choose for their growth the sea-
son of vegetable repose, but the hours of vegetable SLEEP.
In another respect they are beings of contrast, for, while
other vegetables are adding oxygen to the air from which
they have extracted its carbon, these, as if they were averse
to agreeing with phenogamous plants "in any respect, are
eliminating carbonic acid, having extracted from the unde-
composed organic matter on which they live, its more
peculiar animal elements, the hydrogen and nitrogen.

Mr. Sowerby, the best of authorities on this subject,
took the minute unopened volva of a Phallus Inodorus into
the house in the evening, and found it in the morning a
full grown plant. In his experiments nothing occurred to
show that this fungus grows in the day time.

Supposing that the minutest fungi possess the general
properties of the class to which they belong, we may readily
perceive what prodigious influence must be exerted on them
by the damp rich air of a swamp — and if they have, as
Heusinger alleges, a polarizing membrane, and conse-

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 57

quently electrical relations to the polarized vesicles of a
marsh mist, that mist, imbued with moisture, enriched by
the terrestrial exhalations, and screened by the shadows of
night, may form the most fruitful floating soil for the in-
visible cells of microscopic cryptogami: — so that from the
damp earth or the nebulous air, or both, may come out to
propagate disease, the cells of an anomalous vegetation.

But it may be reasonably objected, that if these things
do grow at night, they should, sometimes at least, taint the
day-air of their vicinity, from which they can scarcely be
entirely eliminated by an absorbing earth or a dissipating
mist. It might be enough to say that, if they have elec-
trical relations to the mist, or ascend only during the night,
the quantity necessary to produce morbid results may
.not remain during the day, but the study of the habitudes
of the fungi has revealed other reasons for the diurnal
changes of salubrity in malarious regions.

In the first place, let me say, that no other vegetables
are so strictly limited as these, as to existence or proper-
ties, by apparently slight changes in their relations to ex-
trinsics, and yet their germs resist causes of destruction
of the most active nature. Boiling water, many of the
acids and caustic ammonia fail to destroy them, and they
sustain the cold of solid carbonic acid* (Cagniard de la
Tour) without the abatement of their productive power.

Dutrochet found that by slightly acidulating a weak so-
lution of the albumen of an egg, various monilia were pro-
duced, but that when it was made alkaline the genus
Botrytis appeared. On a, neutral or simple solution, no
fungi showed themselves.

The torula cerevisise, or yeast plant, grows in one form

* Minus 118° F.

58 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

in a saccharine solution containing yeast, and in another
very dissimilar shape in stale beer. " There are some
(fungi) which are seen only once or twice in an age, and
that in places where it is very difficult to account for their
formation." — (Art. MusTir. — Rees.)

According to Pereira, "the fungi consist of cells and
fibres, always sprouting from organized and generally de-
cayed or .decaying substances, not perfected wlien entirely
immersed in water."

Fungi (on the authority of Herat et Lens), appear sus-
ceptible of remarkable diversification, according to climate,
season, and soil, which polymorpliia makes their study dif-
ficult.

Almost every mineral, however poisonous, supports a
peculiar cryptogamous vegetation. Thus we have hydro-
crocis arsenici in solutions of arsenic, hyd. barytica in so-
lutions of baryta. Fungi grow in ink, in wing, indeed, in
everything; and naturalists are yet in doubt whether
these seemingly diverse things owe their differences to soil,
water, and temperature, or to different germs, each capa-
ble of growing only in its restricted field.

Some fungi are confined to particular plants, both above
and beneath the surface of the ground, and some, as the
entophytes, exist only in the interior of living vegetables.
Even within hard, dried wood, a fungus creates a species
of fermentation, by which moisture is evolved. The
fungus appears, finally, at the surface, and the ligneous
fibre crumbles to dust. It is dry rot; and the destroyers
are the Polyporus destructor and the Merulius lacry-
mans, and Vastator.

Most writers on this subject, including Christison and
Foder£, believe that the climate alone greatly alters the
fungi; so that some, which are generally eaten with safety,

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 59

become poisonous, and some of the poisonous kinds become
esculent. The Ag. Piperatus, according to Haller, is poi-
sonous in France, but esculent in Russia. The Amanita
Muscaria, an intoxicating food in Siberia, becomes a deadly
poison in the south of Europe. Fodere states, that the
most delightful of the esculent mushrooms of France be-
come unsafe after prolonged rains. The same thing occurs
in South Carolina, where, in very wet weather, it be-
comes necessary to remove the mushrooms, or keep up
the hogs, that they may not be poisoned by that which,
in common weather, is eaten to advantage.

As the power of growth, and the quality of the fungi,
are so dependent on slight causes, we can scarcely wonder
that a plant of this class may be noxious as produced at
night, and hurtless as developed by day. Even if pro-
duced alike in both, the poison of the cryptogami is so
subtle and fugacious, that a little daylight or sunshine
may totally alter its properties. Foderd (Med. Legal)
tells us that most fungi become safe when they have been
dried, which Christison thinks probable, as their poisonous
properties appear to depend on a volatile principle. Fi-
nally, Letellier assures us, that the acrid principle of the
agarics is so very fugacious, that it disappears on boiling,
or drying, or by maceration in weak acids, alkalies, or
alcohol. If, after all this, we find a malarious poison active
at night, and not by day, it does not present an objection to
the theory proposed, but affords some support to it, since
we know of no other things which are so materially af-
fected by light and heat.

I am now, gentlemen, about to show you a very curi-
ous part of this singular subject, the extraordinary asso-
ciation of fungous life with the existence and propagation
of great epidemics and intense endemics. Not only are

60 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

common moulds more common on such occasions, but there
often appear new, or unusual productions of this kind.
Hecker and Webster abound with examples of this truth.
These moulds were chiefly red, but sometimes white, yel-
low, gray, or even black. They arose in an incredibly
short time, on the roofs of houses, on the pavements of
cities; on clothes, on the veils, and handkerchiefs of women;
on various wooden domestic utensils, and on the meats
in the larder. Even the depths of cellars, and the in-
most recesses of cupboards and chests were invaded by
a blood-like mould, which filled the observers with disgust
and horror.

Joseph Mather Smith remarks, u that pestilence; a
strong tendency in dead animal and vegetable substances
to rapid decomposition; morbid and immature fruits; and
a vast amount of insect life; seem to have a common
cause in epidemic meteoration." Admitting the extra-
ordinary tendency to decomposition manifested in epide-
mic periods, Craigie observes, " that the rapid decompo-
sition of vegetable and animal matters is to be regarded,
not as a cause of fevers, but an effect of the febriferous
state of the atmosphere, which thus displayed its insalu-
brious influence, not only on the human race, but on the
vegetable world, and on dead animal and vegetable
matter."

Plutarch, in his life of Romulus, says, that in the first
great plague at Eome, it seemed to "rain blood."

On the 3d of July, 1529, when the continental sweat-
ing sickness prevailed, a blood rain, as it was termed, ap-
peared at Cremona. In the sweating sickness of the Eng-
lish, there was remarked " an exuberance of the lowest
cryptbgamous vegetation."

In that calamitous period, which commenced An. Dom.

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 61

250, Decius being emperor, a pestilence began, which cut
off, in the next fifteen years, half the human race. Eu-
sebius relates that the air was so impure, as to " cast a
mould like turbid dew, of a cadaverous hue, on every ob-
ject." Cadenus likened it to the gore or blood of the dead.

In 1813, at Malta, on the 14th of March, " the light
showers that fell in some parts of the island, brought
down a reddish earth with them. The same phenomena
were observed at Palermo on the same day. In April,
the plague commenced its ravages in Malta. (Maclean.)

Boyle makes the observation that, at Naples, in 1660,
there was a pestilence, during which, curious mould spots
appeared on garments. So, in the plague of 746, spots,
in the form of crosses, were observed on clothes.

At Brussels, in 1502, a pestilence drove the people from
the city. On their return, they observed that, in that
single season, a cryptogamous vegetation had covered the
roofs of the houses. (Webster.)

At New York, in 1795, Bailey describes the destructive
influence of that sickly season on cabbages, different kinds
of fruit, &c. " It was remarkable that cherries did not
come to perfection, and very soon showed a disposition to
decay. The apples began to fall nearly a month before
the usual time. Those which came to maturity could not
be kept so long as it is common for them to be preserved.1'

Webster also speaks of that year, (1795,) as peculiarly
fungiferous. To use his own words, " the air of New
York produced astonishing effects in the way of mould."
Garments were spotted in a single night, the pavements
became mouldy, and wooden furniture and utensils were
spotted. Even desks, carefully closed, were invaded by
mildew.

The year 1798 was remarkable for its prolonged heat
6

62 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

and drought. Looking over the distinct and simple daily
narrative of Dr. S. P. Griffitts, I find no mention of rain
from the 20th July to the 4th September; and other
writers describe this season as peculiarly hot and dry.
Notwithstanding this, Condie and Folwell inform us, that
" the different kinds of mushrooms were found in great
abundance during their season." Webster also states,
that in this year there were fogs which had a singular
odor, and " even the pavements were covered with a
mouldy dew." Through Dr. Rush, we also learn that the
great heat of the season brought peaches to perfection
nearly three weeks before the usual time; whilst apples,
after being gathered, rotted much sooner than is com-
monly observed.

In 1799, at New York, similar phenomena were ob-
served; and Webster noticed the extraordinary death of
multitudes of flies, which became white exteriorly. This
disease seems analogous to that of the muscardine of the
silkworm.

In pestilential Africa, when the rains and the sickness
commence together, the fungiferous powers are fearfully
developed. According to Park and Lind, the first rains
stain the clothes, and make even woolens and leather
mouldy and rotten in a day or two.

. In St. Lucia, the most unhealthy station of the West
Indies, " during the driest period of the year, a pair of
boots are covered with vegetation, within twenty-four
hours after being cleaned." (Evans.) In confined places,
in unhealthy stations, the air is of a mouldy odor, " earthy
and mouldy." (Robt/ Armstrong.)

During the epidemics of yellow fever at Natchez in both
1823 and 1825, Cartwright noticed an extraordinary tend-
ency to the production of mould, so that the shoemakers

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 63

complained of the extreme difficulty of preserving even
new articles in their line. Cartwright was surprised at
this, because, the meteorological state of the atmosphere
would not account for it. It ivas a fungiferous power ir-
respective of unusual dampness.

During the prevalence of the cholera in Philadelphia in
1832, I was shown in several different places a splendid
vermilion colored mucor, which attached itself to paste,
starch and other vegetable preparations. The house-
keepers who noticed it then, had not observed it previous-
ly, nor have any of them seen it since. At that time,
the flies died as in New York in 1799, and were covered
with a whitish dust. Confirmatory of these observations is
the assertion of Copplez, Lamoth, and Coulin, that ali-
mentary substances putrefied with unusual rapidity in the
season of cholera.

In a letter addressed to me on the 3d of December,
1847, by Josiah G. Cable, M.D., of the U. S. service, I
am informed, that, at Monterey, in a season always ex-
cessively dry, and then peculiarly so, under a burning
sun, and on a lofty range of country, the men suffered
greatly from miasmatic disorders. He also remarked the
uncommon fungiferous tendencies of the place, as mani-
fested by the mould on fruit, and the cacti, and aloe, and
even "when a dead Mexican was turned over on the bat-
tle-field, his clothes were found to be covered with a white
fungus."

In fine, the history of epidemics abounds everywhere
in examples of the cryptogamous luxuriancy of epidemic
seasons. It is noticed by the careless observers of the
middle ages, in more than half the recorded cases; and
the ancients speak, not unfrequently, of offensive fogs
and frightful mists and moulds. The spirit of the mist,

64 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

according to Hecker, stinking and pestilential, moved
over the face of devoted England, where, as it went, were
scattered the seeds of the sudor anglicanus, by which that
kingdom was almost depopulated, and sometimes the peo-
ple of the villages were entirely exterminated. Many
epidemics, as cholera and plague, select for peculiar resi-
dence and ravage, damp, dark, noisome places, where
want of light and dryness and ventilation, must especially
favor fungiferous processes. The instinctive aversion to
mouldiness, as to serpents, seems to be, therefore, not
without its utility, and in seeking the elevation in society
which gives to man cleanly habits and an airy residence, in-
dividuals find a physical exemption from disease and pain
even more valuable than the social enjoyments.

In the history of epizootics, are related a multitude of
examples of the production of destructive diseases, appa-
rently brought upon cattle and other animals by mould.

The fatal angina maligna of cattle, a gangrenons dis-
ease, which prevailed in 1682, was attended by a blue mist
or dew on the herbage of pastures.

The milzbrand, a gangrenous disease of cattle, not un-
usual in France and Germany, is, according to Thomasin,
very prevalent in Burgundy and Provence, where it affects
the herds chiefly of low and humid districts in summer or
autumn after inundations, by which the pasturage is de-
teriorated and the fodder moulded and mildewed. The
disease thus acquired by cattle, may be conveyed to other
animals including man, by ingestion (Chaussier, &c.) or
even contact with the skin (Morand, Duhamel, Thomasin),
producing in either way symptoms of fever in some persons,
and malignant pustules in others. Sometimes a gangrenous
fever is the consequence, and at other times only a local
gangrene of a very intractable character ensues. That the

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 65

poison upon which this very curious disease depends, is
vegetable, may be strongly inferred from the fact that its
virus is capable of resisting, not only the heat of boiling
water, but the action of caustic lime prolonged for at least
two weeks. (Gruby.) No animal substance or even ovum,
is known to have the power of resisting such agents, while,
according to Cagniard de la Tour, the spori of the fungi
can withstand means of destruction quite as potent. And,
on the authority of many authors, we know that " unlike
most seeds, they (the spori of the fungi) seem capable of
resisting the prolonged heat of boiling water, infused in
which, and poured upon the ground, they are still capable
of producing, each after its kind." (Badham.) So tena-
cious of its integrity and power is the virus of malignant
pustule, that it can retain its destructive properties even
when the wool or hair has been cleansed and woven into
cloth, or the hide converted into leather. (Bayer.)

In this instance we have a disease originating in a graz-
ing animal, probably from its food, when mildewed, which
disease may be propagated by inoculation or ingestion,
and of which the germs resist the heat of boiling water,
the caustic action of lime, the detergents of the washer
and weaver, and the prolonged tanning of the leather-
dresser. Nothing known to us but the spores or nucleoli
of the fungi are capable of accounting for these pheno-
mena. Vimat, a commissioner of the Royal Academy of
Medicine, made a report to his constituents, on an epi-
demic which occurred in the department of La Muerthe
near Marsal, which began in the cattle fed on recently in-
undated swamps. It was a carbunculous affection, which
without material change of character, affected subsequently
the inhabitants of the same district. (Fourcroy, Med.
Eclairee.)

6*

66 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

J. S. Michael Leger, published at Vienna, in 1775, a
treatise concerning the mildew as the principal cause of
epidemic disease among cattle. The mildew is that which
burns and dries the grass and leaves. It is observed early
in the morning, particularly after thunder-storms. Its
poisonous quality, which does not last above twenty-four
hours, never operates but when it is swallowed immedi-
ately after its falling.

There is, in the wild regions of our own western coun-
try, a disease called the milk-sicJcness, the trembles, the
tires, the slows, the stiff-joints, the puking fever, &c. Of
this curious malady, I have already, gentlemen, given you
in its proper place, an elaborate history; but it may not
be useless here, to recapitulate the leading thoughts of that
lecture.

An animal affected by the cause alluded to, usually ex-
hibits the symptoms of the disease upon being driven hard
for a very short distance, perhaps only a hundred yards.*
It then trembles, loses its regular power of locomotion,
staggers, falls, makes ineffectual attempts to rise, becomes
convulsed, and dies. When the affection arrives under
quietude, the animal seems to lose its voluntary route, and
strays irregularly and apparently without motive. Its
power of attention is impaired, the eyes become red and
turgid, and the color deepens from a bright to a dark red.
Finally, it trembles, staggers and dies. When other ani-
mals— men,* dogs, cats, poultry, crows, buzzards and hogs —
drink the milk or eat the flesh of a diseased cow, they suf-
fer in a somewhat different manner. The attack in men

* This reminds us of tlie tetanode state of a frog, which being affected
by a small dose of strychnia, falls into convulsions at the touch even of a
feather. Marshall Hall recognizes the resemblance in this, to a diseased
predisposition, waiting for an exciting cause.

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 67

is usually ushered in by nausea, followed by vomiting,
which at irregular intervals recurs, until the close of the
case in death or convalescence, a period usually of from
four or five to ten days. In the first stage of the attack,
the sufferer complains of severe pains in the limbs, but
chiefly in the calves of the legs, and sometimes at the
nape of the neck. A headache is a common event. Even
before the open attack, during the incubative period, con-
stipation is observed, and a very obstinate torpidity of the
bowels is a marked feature during the whole case. The
abdomen is commonly enlarged, and doughy, and presents
a very singular, diffused pulsation, most conspicuous to the
right- of the navel. In some cases there is gastric or ab-
dominal pain and tenderness, in others, even the prolonged
vomiting does not cause pain; but usually there is per-
ceived a curious and intense sense of heat at the epigas-
trium, which produces a desire for cool drinks, independ-
ently of a sense of thirst.

As in most intense fevers, the pulse is often in this one,
even natural, or, while the face is flushed, the extremities
become frightfully cold, and the pulse falls to preternatu-
ral slowness or is accelerated to one hundred and ten or
one hundred and twenty per minute. (Buck.) In some
cases no sensorial disturbance is perceived, in others there
is intense nervousness, extending sometimes to delirium,
vigilance, coma. Such cases commonly prove fatal, after
the occurrence of singultus, subsultus, a hurried irregular
pulse, cold extremities and a sunken countenance.* There
is, according to every detailed account, a singular fetidity
of the breath, not like any smell known to the describers;

* Sometimes the hair, cuticle and nails drop off. (Lea.)
M. Roulin tells us that in Colombia, the maize is liable to a kind of
fungus or ergot, which occasions the loss of nails and hair.

68 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

which, with obstinate vomiting and costiveness, peculiar,
soft enlargement of the tongue, and an abdominal pulsa-
tion, most distinctly felt to the right of the umbilicus,
constitute the marked distinctions of this malady.

The animals made sick by the beef of the first one,
have been, in their turn, the cause of a like affection in
others; so that three or four have thus fallen victims suc-
cessively.

Whatever the poison may be, it resisted the influence
of the cook, in all the customary modes of preparation,
also the action of diluted acids, and alkaline solutions,
and chlorine, and some of the chlorides. Infusion of
galls alone seemed to abate, but not to destroy its viru-
lence. The water, in which poisoned beef had been boiled,
acquired no poisonous properties; while the beef remained
as noxious as ever. Butter from diseased cows, heated
until it caught fire, did not lose its deleterious proper-
ties. (Graaf.) The urine of diseased animals, collected
and reduced by evaporation, produced the characteristic
symptoms. Milk of affected cows, or sluts, was very
poisonous to their own young as well as to other animals,
whilst the lactation preserved themselves from the malady,
so long as they were milked regularly.

The animals originally affected, are only such as live
upon herbage, such as cows, horses, goats, and sheep.
The pastures in which the disease is found, are always the
unbroken soil of the new country. The action of the
plough, e^en for a single season, is regarded by most au-
thors as & permanent corrective.

Whatever may be the poison, its most potent activity
exists in the end of summer and in autumn, chiefly in Sep-
tember and October. One writer denies the truth of this
statement, but a large number assert it very positively.

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 69

It also acts only at night, or until the dew has been ex-
haled from the grass in the morning; for even the worst
ranges are safe during the day, except where they lie in
thickly wooded districts.

This disease has been found in rich alluvial places, on
high barren ridges, on open plains, and in the deepest
woods. Its place is sometimes confined to a small space
inclosed as a " sugar-orchard," and entirely destitute of
water; while it extends in other cases throughout a long
narrow range of country, for as much as one hundred
miles.

From the testimony of authors, each of whom has a pe-
culiar opinion on the point, milk-sickness may prevail in
wet or dry, hot or cool autumns, the character of the sea-
son seeming to have no especial relation to the severity of
the epizootic.

The period of incubation varies in cattle, from two to
ten days, when an attack is not sooner excited by violent
exercise. When the disease is produced by the swallowing
of poisonous beef, or milk, butter or cheese, the nausea and
vomiting may occur almost instantaneously, or may not
appear until after the lapse of several hours or even days.

"Whatever may be the poison, it seems, according to the
experiments of Graaf, to be reproductive within the sys-
tem of the poisoned anitnals; for, the quantity of flesh ne-
cessary to produce the diseased effect, was about the same,
whether taken from an animal originally affected, or from
others successively poisoned by its flesh or milk.

Most writers say, that attempts to inoculate with the
blood, milk, &c., of affected animals have failed, but Drake
asserts, on the authority of two credible witnesses, that
the milk-sickness was produced in them by skinning dis-
eased cows.

70 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT

The autopsy showed gastro-intestinal inflammation, en-
largement and softening of the liver and spleen. The
meninges and brain exhibited congestion, inflammation,
serum, lymph, pus. In all the fatal cases, the blood failed
to coagulate, and there was uniformly a contraction of the
stomach and intestines.

Authors generally admit, that only the grazing animals
take the disease originally, and that other animals can
only receive it through the medium of their flesh, or milk,
after they have been poisoned. As all animals seem im-
pressible, there is a fair inference against the aerial cha-
racter of the cause of milk-sickness, by which, if it exist,
they should be equally and originally tainted. The fa-
cility of the correction by the plough, the insoluble and
non-volatile nature of the poison, evinced by the effects of
boiling or roasting the beef, and of the evaporation of urine
even to dryness, all show clearly that the poison is not
atmospheric, not aeriform or vaporous. It seems, there-
fore, plain enough that cattle receive it into the stomach
as food or beverage. That the poison is not found in the
water taken by the grazing animals, seems highly proba-
ble, because it has not been found subsequently to be so-
luble in that menstruum, or, indeed, in any other simple
liquid, whilst the truth of this position has been almost
demonstrated by confining them* in limited enclosures,
where, notwithstanding the total absence of water, many
of them have, in repeated instances, exhibited veritable
symptoms of the trembles. A critical examination of the
waters of infected regions has failed to show peculiar or
poisonous properties, and the plough corrects the evil,
without being shown to be able to alter the waters mate-
rially.

It seems, then, very probable, that the poison, whatever
it may be, is swallowed with the food. Now the food is

AND IN EPIDEMICS. 71

more or less soiled with earth. It is, also, in its most
hazardous condition, covered with dew, and is infected by
insects, and the seeds of various plants and flowers.

Of these, the soil cannot give the venom, as it would
not lose such a power by the action of the plough. A
mineral poison would also be easily detected in it, and
could not propagate itself through a succession of animals;
nor has it a reproductive power.

We are reduced, therefore, to the only remaining hypo-
thesis, the introduction of an organic poison of some kind,
animal or vegetable, into the nostrils or stomachs, (proba-
bly the latter,) of the affected animals. The long latent
continuance of the poison in the body, the apparently small
quantity of it necessary to create disease, and the seeming
reproduction after reception, all enforce the conviction
that the virus is organic.

Having rendered probable the presence, in these cases,
of an organic agent, the usual course of medical reasoning
would lead us to assume its animal derivation, especially
as it seems to have, even in the system, a reproductive
power. But just at this point of time, the microscopic
discovery of the frequent connection of vegetations with
cutaneous and mucous diseases, and the probability that,
in other, and somewhat analogous cases, cryptogamous
plants exercise a disease-creating power, embarrass us with
a new element of difficulty.

Animal poisons are usually soluble, are commonly in-
nocuous in the stomach, are not most potent at night, do
not affect particularly the autumnal season; nor can we
see how the plough could correct the evil, if of an animal
character. The extraordinary fixity and indestructibility
of the germs of this disease, point strongly to a vegetable
source.

72 THE FUNGI PREVAIL AT NIGHT AND IN EPIDEMICS.

We are thrown back, therefore, by a kind of necessity,
on its vegetable origin, and among vegetables we find none,
whose habitudes and modes of action, so strongly as the
fungi, entitle them to the sad distinction of creating this
singular malady. They grow in autumn, they grow at
night, they are disarmed by light and heat, they have ex-
traordinary tenacity of life and texture, and yet are re-
pressed by very slight alterations of soil and circumstance.
They are usually poisonous, and produce curious and diver-
sified maladies. Women are less affected than men by
their poison, and children escape more readily than men
and women. Some of them, after sending their poison
through the system, escape unchanged by some one of the
emunctories, as the amanita muscaria, by the kidneys.
As we are reasoning upon probabilities here, let me ask
what animal poison, what mineral poison, offers so many
and so strong analogies, to entitle us to esteem it a cause
of the milk-sickness.

THE POISONOUS EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 73

LECTUEE IV.

MOST OF THE FUNGI ARE POISONOUS, AND PRODUCE DIS-
EASES RESEMBLING MARSH FEVERS.

only are the fungi generally, poisonous to a sin-
gular degree, but the phenomena attendant upon their
introduction into the system are so peculiar, as to arrest
the attention both of the toxicologist and pathologist. In
most cases, the poison lies dormant, for a time after its
ingestion, then excites a morbid action of a febrile cha-
racter, continued in some instances, remittent or intermit-
tent in others, which is sometimes followed by abscesses
or gangrene, as observed in typhoid fever and plague,
occasionally by locked jaw and yellow skin, as in yel-
low fever. Even when using habitually, fungous food
of a slowly poisonous quality, such as rye affected with
ergotsetia abortifaciens, females of adult age, and the
richer classes of society are, to a remarkable degree, ex-
empted from the disease-producing potency, which exerts
itself so disastrously in some parts of France and Swit-
zerland, on the poorer and more exposed portion of so-
ciety.

Of late years, too, it has been found that many cuta-
neous disorders, and at least one mucous disease, are, if
not absolutely dependent on, at least closely associated
with, and aggravated by, the growth of minute crypto-
gami. That these predatory fungi are really causers of
7

74 THE POISONOUS

the maladies with which they are uniformly connected, is
made still more probable by the demonstration of the ex-
istence in insects, and even many larger animals, of con-
tagious cryptogamous diseases, which, transferred from
animals to plants, and from plants to animals, become
very destructive, not only to their immediate victims, but
to important commercial interests dependent on them.

It is scarcely necessary to prove to any intelligent
reader, that the fungi are commonly poisonous. The
caution with which mushrooms are bought, and examined,
and cooked, evinces a sufficient knowledge everywhere, of
the danger of eating the wild kinds. But as I am elabo-
rating an argument upon a new and difficult subject, a
few quotations, to show the sentiment of the best informed
persons, may not be inexpedient. "By far the greater
part of the tribe," says Comstock, "are poisonous. Some
of them are so exceedingly virulent, as to destroy life in
a short time. Adepts, therefore, in botany, dread the
wild kinds." "So poisonous," says the author of the
article mushroom, in Rees Cyclopedia, "is one species of
agaric, as to kill the very flies as they settle on it. The
Agaricus muscarius is therefore used to poison flies and
bed-bugs. Burnett quotes several curious cases where
death has arisen in persons who have eaten mouldy (fun-
giferous) bread, mouldy pork, mouldy cheese, mouldy
ham, pie, &c.

But it is rather to the peculiarities of these poisonings,
than to the general fact, that I would direct your atten-
tion. The first of these is the production of FEVER. Pe-
reira tells us, "that the symptoms produced by poisonous
fungi, are those of g astro-intestinal irritation, and a dis-
ordered state of the nervous system," a not inexact general
definition of a malarious fever. "In the human system

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 75

it (Agaricus muscarius) produces shivering, followed by
that kind of delirium which attends an ardent fever." —
(Rees Cycl., Art. Mushr.)

A careful examination of the diseased potatoes of the
British isles, from which that kingdom has of late suffered
so much, shows the uniform existence in them, of "the
fibres of a fungus calied botrytis, from its gr apelike form,
or of one called uredo tuberosum, which may be observed
ramifying round the cells which enclose the starchy cor-
puscules. Now these plants, however minute, are not self-
generated, but must be produced by some seminal impregna-
tion, transported by the atmosphere, and peculiarly adapted
to fructify upon the Sol. Tub. This vegetable distemper,
like that of the cholera, while general in its diffusion, is
determined to particular localities and plants, by predis-
posing causes; yet it is not always dependent on these,
having occurred in many regions where such causes did
not materially operate." — (Ure.) "The effects of using
diseased potatoes, were in the first stage rigors, heat of
skin, quick pulse, and abdominal pain; in the second
stage, rose colored spots, migratory and evanescent, and
diarrhoea ; in the third stadium, a tumefaction of the mus-
cles of the neck, shoulders and arms, acute pain there,
and in the worst cases, erysipelas of the face and scalp,
and oedema of the eyelids." — (O'Brien.)

The effects of heavy single doses of ERGOT are, first, ano-
rexia, nausea, vomiting, dryness of the throat, and thirst;
secondly, abdominal pain and tumefaction, and diarrhoea ;
thirdly, weight and pain of head, giddiness, delirium, di-
lated pupil, somnolency, coma; fourthly, disturbed circula-
tion by increased fullness and frequency, or feebleness and
slowness of the pulse. Formication is a not infrequent
consequence, while protracted use creates, not only febrile

76 THE POISONOUS

symptoms, but, as in malignant fevers, a disposition to
gangrene. Christison describes the effects of its prolonged
use, as weariness and formication. "!N A FEW DAYS fever
sets in, with a hemorrhagic tendency, rending pains of the
limbs, and at length, dry gangrene of the fingers, toes, or
even legs, which drop off by the joints." In some cases,
the author just quoted reports contraction of the spleen*
and enlargement of the liver, as among the effects of
ergot.

Dodart, who acted under a commission of the French
Academy of Medicine, reported to that body, that ergot
occasioned "nervous phenomena and malignant fever,
with stupor."

In 1826, Dr. Westerhoff saw two children who had
been poisoned by mouldy bread ; their faces were red and
swollen, excited and haggard, tongue dry, inextinguishable
thirst, feeble and frequent pulse, abdominal pain, vomiting
and purging, vertigo, headache, great depression of mind
and body, mental indifference, and somnolency.

On the 10th of June, 1839, at a musical festival 'at
Aldenfingen, about six hundred people ate various kinds
of meat, which, after being cooked, had been kept in a
badly ventilated cellar for nearly three days. Upwards
of four hundred of them were, within ten days, attacked
by nausea, vomiting, some mental disturbance, colic pains,
tenderness of the epigastrium and diarrhoea. In the pro-
gress of the cases, disturbed circulation, constipation, fetid
evacuations and tympanitis allied the cases to typhoid
fever, and nine died of this fever. An autopsy revealed
inflammation or ulceration in the lower part of the ileum.
Those who did not go to the festival, but partook of these
cold meats at home, suffered in a similar manner; whilst

* The spleen is sometimes lessened. — Art. Typhus, Die. de Mededne.

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 77

those at the festival who dined on bread and cheese, es-
caped all disorder.

Diseased wheat (Phil. Trans. , Lond. 1762,) produced
at Wattisham, a sickness with sphacelation. Seven per-
sons of one family suffered the loss of one or more of their
limbs, and one had a blackness of two fingers, but re-
covered.

The febrile disease from the use of rye is, according to
Thompson, (Lect. on Infl.) most prevalent in wet or moist
seasons, and in thirty-three years, M. Noel met with this
malady three or four times, and always in rainy and moist
seasons. He also says, that among fifty patients, he did
not find one woman; and he makes the very curious state-
ment, that only the, poor and ill-fed were its victims.

Pereira describes almost choleric effects of the poison
of fungi, when he states, that in some cases, the powers
of the vascular system were "remarkably suppressed, the
pulse being small and feeble, the extremities cold, and the
body covered with a cold sweat.'1

It may not be disadvantageous to insert, in this place,
the description of a yellow fever which became epidemic
in the U. S. Frigate Macedonian. It was given under
oath to a court martial by Surgeon Chase. " There were
pains in the head, loins, and limbs, tenderness at the epi-
gastrium and sometimes in the fauces; nausea, vomiting,
diarrhoea or constipation ; the face was flushed, and some-
times swollen, the pulse was either frequent and full or
slow and small; the eyes were red and watery, the mind
was dejected; and there was, ab initio, low delirium or
violent madness."

The famous sweating sickness usually commenced with
a short shivering fit, which, in malignant cases, convulsed
even the extremities. Many experienced, at the beginning,

78 THE POISONOUS

a disagreeable creeping sensation, or formication, on the
hands and feet, which passed into pricking pains, and an
exceedingly painful sensation under the nails. Some per-
sons were afflicted with swollen hands and feet. In many
the countenance was bloated and livid, the heart "trembled
and palpitated," and lividness and rapid decomposition
evinced the tendency to sphacelation. The plague, with
its symptoms, its abscesses, and its mortification, might
be taken for a case of fungous poisoning in its more in-
tense forms.

You may now, gentlemen, turn to another curious effect
of the poison by the fungi: I mean, periodicity. Many
authors mention, among the phenomena, intermittency ,
or remittency. The most singular of such cases is cited
by Christison, who tells us that a whole family, consisting
of a woman and her four children, were attacked by a
tertian fever, by living exclusively for four months on
edible mushrooms. The peculiar cause of the fever was
made more manifest by the fact, that the husband of the
woman, who lived on other fare, escaped all disease ; while
a cutaneous eruption and subsequent gangrene of the ex-
tremities attacked finally those who had the fever. West-
erhoff observed in those who were poisoned by mouldy
food, an intermittent somnolency, which he terms a re-
markable feature of the case. M. Gassand saw cases of
ergotism where the sensations either of heat or cold were
intermittent.

Several other writers mention this feature. The mental
disturbance intermitted in one case, inflamed eyes in an-
other, and all the phenomena in a third. A young woman
who ate a dish of Agaricus clypeatus, and was attacked with
nausea, vomiting, bilious stools, and a frequent pulse, had
a marked remission on the fourth day. The patient was

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 79

at ease throughout the night, the skin was moist, and the
pulse better. The other symptoms all abated, and the
patient slept. On the fifth day, the symptoms returned,
with delirium, sighing, anxiety, failing pulse, great dys-
pnoea, partial yelloivness of the skin, and even a locked
jaw, as in some cases of yellow fever.

Another author cites a case of fungous toxication, in
which ".the remission was so well marked as to attract
attention. The Die. des Sci. Med. reports cases of
this kind, in which occurred the most acute pains, which
were intermittent ; and often there was a pause of two or
three days, during which the sick could attend to their
affairs." A recent epidemic fever in Scotland presented
both the yellow skin, and the long and curious intermis-
sions described in the above cases.

A reverend gentleman of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, in the city of New York, in the preceding year
(1845), went with his family to a place near Sing-Sing,
and about three miles from the Hudson, which was selected
because of its reputation for health, and its exemption
from malarious diseases. In August and September,
when mushrooms were very abundant, and when the
country people abstained from their use, under the im-
pression that they disposed them to fevers, the clergy-
man's lady, in her frequent drives, collected them daily,
and for some time subsisted almost exclusively on them.
The remainder of the family ate them more sparingly,
and less frequently. About the end of September, the
lady was attacked by an irregular fever, without periodical
chills, but marked by an exacerbation on every second day.
Thus the nature of the case was not suspected, until the
return of an attack in the spring, which became regularly
periodical in June, and assumed a distinct tertian form.

80 THE POISONOUS

It was then cured readily by the sulphate of quinia, and
other means approved for intermittents.

In 1844, I busied myself with collecting and examin-
ing various species of fungi, most of them of a poisonous
quality. For several hours a day, I hung over these
specimens, watching the successive growths of fungus
superimposed on fungus, and endeavoring, with a micro-
scope, to measure the relative size of their spores and
nucleoli. Whilst thus engaged, I was, for the first and
only time since my early childhood, attacked by a tertian,
and was compelled to resort, after the third paroxysm, to
the usual treatment for an intermittent. Whether this
attack was the result of the slight vegetable decomposition,
or an effect of the inhalation of spores of invisible fungi,
I know not, but the coincidence was at least singular.
Th^at the latter supposition is the more probable one, is
sustained by the well-known fact, that after an evacuation
by an emetic or cathartic, of the poisonous fungi, no re-
medy is so valuable, as a corrective of the febrile and
other consequences, as the preparations of cinchona.
Merat and Lens, after describing cases of disease pro-
duced by fungi, remark, that preparations of the, barJc are
the best remedy. Confirmatory of this opinion is the
statement of Dr. King, of New York (New York Med.
and PJiys. Journ.^ 1825), that, in a case of ergotism,
wine and bark constituted the most effective remedial
agents.

We thus, see, gentlemen, that when patients are slightly
affected by the fungi, symptoms arise which closely ally
the cases to those of common marsh fevers; and that the
resemblance is still farther improved by the discovery,
that both are to be most successfully treated by the anti-
periodics.

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 81

More intense poisonings, by superadding buboes and
mortification to other symptoms, bring fungiform dis-
eases into close resemblance to the plague. Indeed,
when we read first of the course and character of most
epidemics, and then turn to the history of cryptogamism,
in its diversified groupings, we cannot fail to be surprised
at the many points of resemblance.

The plague is esteemed by many persons, but an ex-
aggeration of paludal fever. Mirolanoff, among others,
inclines to this sentiment, and says that, at Archial, both
officers and soldiers, who had intermittent fevers, were at-
tacked with buboes and carbuncles. At Adrianople, Dr.
llinx observed that the slighter forms of plague were
not distinguishable from intermittent fever, until the ap-
pearance of the buboes. Begin and Baudin also concur
in the supposition, that plague is of the family of inter-
mittents. John Hunter, M.D. of Jamaica, saw carbuncles
in intermittent fever. After some continuance the part
mortifies. "I have seen this in the scrotum, and also in
the foot, and occasionally the loss of a toe." He also
enumerates locked jaw as among the incidents of such
cases. In 1798 Dr. S. P. Griffitts observed, in one day,
two cases of mortification in yellow fever: one around
the anus, and the other in a finger. Arujula met with
carbunculous cases of yellow fever, and several gangre-
nous tumors.

The Hungarian fever of 1566, presented a kind of
crisis by tubercles on the top of the foot, which, if ne-
glected, ended in mortification, and many suffered amputa-
tion. (Skenkius.) In 1600 there raged throughout Europe
a mortal colic, which usually destroyed life within four
days. The patient became almost immediately senseless,
the hair fell from his head, a livid pustule appeared upon

82 THE POISONOUS

the nose, which consumed it, and the extremities became
cold and mortified. (Webster.) M. Roulin relates that
in Colombia, the maize is liable to a kind of fungus or
ergot, which occasions the loss of nails and hair. The
poisonous property is lost by conveying it across the Cor-
dilleras. (Herat and Lens.)

Marcellinus tells us that there " arose, in the reign of
Marcus Antoninus, a fatal pestilence, which began at the
sacking of Seleucia, and extended over the civilized world,
from Caledonia to Persia. It was supposed to have arisen
from the foul air from a box, opened by a soldier, in
search of plunder. The symptoms were, light fever, and
a gangrene on the ends of the feet. In Rome alone,
10,000 died of it daily."- The dark, damp old box, the
evidence of a reproductive power, and the light fever and
severe gangrene, speak strongly in favor of the fungous
origin of this epidemic. Something very like this happened
at Canton, where three persons were attacked with fever,
and two with gangrene, in consequence of breaking un-
expectedly into a coffin, long buried. Fortunately, no
reproduction took place, and the terrible malady ceased
with its first victims.

In another pestilence, A. D. 262, described by St. Cy-
prian, the patients suffered from despondency, debility,
involuntary evacuations, inflamed mouth, swollen stomach,
and sparkling eyes. The disease destroyed the feet, hands,
sight, hearing, and organs of generation.

Chirac thus describes an epidemic at Rochfort, in
1741. Chilliness, great pain in the head, sense of intoxi-
cation, small pulse, syncope, epi&taxis, inexpressible loss
of strength, constant agitation of the limbs, leaden, cada-
verous face, eyes dull or sparkling, continual nausea or

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 83

vomiting, suppuration of the parotids, buboes, carbuncles,
especially on the head and hands.

Gualtier de Claubry abounds in descriptions of gan-
grenous fevers of a low type. Thus in the typhus at
Mayence, in 1813, and 1814, there was " often gangrene
of the extremities." At Forgau, in 1813, there was " often
gangrene of the extremities." In the hospital at Langres,
in 1806, there was sometimes " dry gangrene of the feet/'
Fouquier, in describing a fever in the department of the
Moxelle, in 1813, speaks of partial gangrenes on the sur-
face of the body.

Thouvenel, a physician at Pont a Mousson, describes a
febrile gangrene of projecting parts. Roux, Gilbert, Des-
castaing, Reveille, Parise, Frisal, Bom, Mauguis, Thou-
venel, Fleury, Latourette, Robert, Fouquier, Gras, Castel,
&c., mention, as events in fever, partial gangrene of the
nose, ears, fingers, toes, and the loss even of a whole
limb. So also, John Hunter, McGregor, Pringle, Griffitts,
Hillary, Deveze, Fellowes, Arejula, and others, describe,
as accidents of yellow and other fevers, mortification of
the stomach, intestines, lungs, arms, legs, and scrotum.

One of the most striking examples of a gangrenous
fever, presented itself in the village of Deerfield, in New
England, of which the following account is extracted
from the Walpole Observatory, of the 9th Nov., 1807.
"On Tuesday, 2d September, 1807, Joshua Fink, an un-
married man, of about 25 years of age, returned from
Hartford in Connecticut, to his father's house in Deerfield,
where he became very ill, but finally recovered his health.
On the 25th, twenty-three days after his return, his mother,
Amy Fink, and his niece, who had nursed him in his illness,
were attacked with chilliness and vomiting, followed by
excruciating pains and soreness throughout their whole

84 THE POISONOUS

frames. They both died within twenty-four hours, in a
putrefactive state. In that family circle, thirteen or
fourteen persons were similarly affected, and only three or
four recovered. Most of them died within twenty-four
hours, in a putrid state. On the 7th of October, Sally
Blacker was taken ill of the same disease and died on
the fifth day." The narrative declares that she did not
putrefy immediately like the others, EXCEPT ONE OF HER
FINGERS.

While poisonous fungi create the usual signs of fever,
affecting the mucous tissue of the primoe vise with inflam-
mation, congesting the brain, disordering the liver and
spleen, disturbing the circulation, and lessening or vitiat-
ing all the secretions, they produce, when used to excess,
or for a prolonged period of time, a marked tendency to
the ulceration and sloughing of compressed parts, as in
typhoid fever, or to the mortification of the intestines or
extremities, as in yellow fever, epidemic, camp, jail, or
hospital fever, or to carbuncular destruction, as in plague.
Every fungus of a poisonous nature does not produce all
these morbid phenomena ; but even the most nutritive of
the mushrooms will, when long and almost exclusively eat-
en, manifest the characteristic effects of the class. In sud-
den poisonings, the peculiar tendency to sphacelation does
not often occur, and when a disease is occasioned by only
one or two doses, we seldom meet with gangrenous phe-
nomena; but dreadful mortification often follows their
slow and protracted application. As far as I can obtain
information, it is made apparent that the more minute
fungous forms have the most poisonous and gangrenous
influence. Thus the long use of bread made of diseased
rye (Ergotsetia abortifaciens) causes, not only a distinctly
formed fever of a remittent character, but gangrenous

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 85

sloughs in the intestines, and the dry rot of the extremi-
ties. We can scarcely resist the conclusion that this last
effect is the consequence of the absorption and vital ac-
tion of the fungous spores in the parts thus destroyed.
Vegetables furnish us with many analogies. The diseases
to which fruits and bulbous and tuberous roots are liable,
are often the effect of absorbed fungi. Thus, in the mi-
croscopic journal, we learn, that Arthur Hill Hassall
caused decay at will, in sound fruit, by inoculating it with
the spawn of fungi from rotten specimens. The mere bruis-
ing of fruit would not cause decay, unless fungi or their
spores were present. So, the dry gangrene of the potato,
so fatal of late to that esculent in Germany, and since, in
Great Britain and Ireland, is produced by the absorption
and destructive reproduction of fungous germs in its very
substance.* The analogy seems complete ; for, in both
sets of cases, fungi produce the disease, and in both, a
destruction of the life of remote parts is the consequence.
In the potato and apple, the result is demonstratively
caused by fungi. In the animal, may we not safely infer
it, especially as several instances are recorded, where the
putrid matter, conveyed to puerperal women by the hand
of the surgeon-accoucheur, has appeared to produce gan-
grenous phlebitis ; just as was similarly excited, a gan-
grene of the fruit and the root.f

Even to my own mind, gentlemen, arises the objection,
that most of my analogies result from cases in which the
poisonous articles were taken into the stomach, and that
too, in large doses, such as could not be received into the

* Ann. des Sci. Nat., Sep. 1842. M. De Martius.

|ln Simon's Chemistry, published since the first delivery of these lec-
tures, we are told that Scherer obtained in the abdominal cavity of one
who died of metroperitonitis, organisms resembling minute algae.

8

86 THE POISONOUS

system in any other mode. That objection seems more
specious than sound, when we remember that very small
doses of poisons are highly effective when inhaled by the
organs of respiration. Thus a very few drops of chloro-
form will, by inhalation, produce effects on the nervous
and vascular systems, more potent than can be created
by any dose, however great, thrown into the stomach. A
drachm of ether inhaled from a bag, will intoxicate, stu-
pefy, and prodigiously excite him whom ten or even
twenty times that quantity would not greatly move by
the stomach. So, while it requires not less than thirty
grains of arsenic (Christison) to kill an adult, I have known
nearly fatal results from the inhalation of less than half a
grain of arseniuretted hydrogen. Now it is obvious that,
of the small quantity of the respired articles mentioned, a
much smaller quantity is absorbed by the pulmonary mem-
brane, and passes into the circulation. Of the few drops
of chloroform used, at least nine-tenths must be exhaled
by the breath, and thrown away. But when organized
substances find their way into the tide of blood, and that
too with vital energies capable of reacting on the elements
of the sanguine current, it requires but little acquaintance
with physiological and pathological phenomena, to induce
us to dread the most fearful results. Even when their
vital powers are destroyed by mechanical or chemical pro-
cesses, vegetable poisons act, in the smallest portions, with
great violence. How much strychnia, or digitalia, or
aconita is requisite for the disturbance of functions, or the
arrest of vital action ? Certainly much less than we may
readily suppose could be inhaled by a sleeper, if such things
were suspended in his atmosphere, even with faint diffusion.
But the experiment of Prout during the cholera in London,
in 1832, if to be relied on? showed a gain in atmospheric

EFFECTS OF FUNGI. 87

specific weight of one sixty-second part; which would give
scarcely less than a drachm by weight of some poison,
suspended in each cubic foot of the atmosphere of London.
That quantity of air may be inhaled during common re-
spiration, in fifty inspirations ; and, as most persons respire
not less than fifteen times a minute, a cubic foot of air may
pass through the bronchial tubes in three minutes and a
half. How much, then, of such a poison, may be present-
ed to the bronchial surface, in the course of a single night !
With how much more force, too, will it act, when it assails
the system through that channel! Substances presented
to the gastro-intestinal surfaces are mixed up with various
secretions, mucus, saliva, gastric juice, bile, pancreatic
liquor, and special exudations from the peculiar glands of
each successive section, while aerial poisons, unmixed and
unfettered, are applied at once to a surface on which, be-
hind scarcely a shadow of a film, circulates the blood pre-
pared, by the habitual action of the respiratory function,
to absorb almost every vapor, and every odor, which may
not be too irritating to pass the gates of the glottis. It is,
perhaps, for this reason, that we have so instinctive a dis-
like of mouldy smells, and of humid musty places, and un-
happily, we discover, that in the abodes of filth and poverty,
where misery dwells, and moulds do most abound, the great
non-contagious epidemics find and destroy the greatest
number of victims, because there is the especial domain
of fungiferous potency.

I have hitherto spoken to you of the action of fungi,
when swallowed, or when inhaled by the respiratory or-
gans. I am now about to direct your attention to a not
less curious department of our subject. I mean the asso-
ciation of obvious fungous growths with the cutaneous and
mucous diseases both of men and animals. In the very

88 CUTANEOUS

time in which we live, there has arisen almost a new sci-
ence, founded on the discovery that many cutaneous dis-
eases, some maladies of the mucous system, and" a nflmber
of the disorders of insects and reptiles, seem to be pro-
duced by vegetations in the living tissues, by which com-
fort is impaired and sometimes life 'sacrificed.

Caffort alleges, that the agaricus fimetarius is found in
ill-conditioned wounds (Annal. de Montpelier, 1808), and
Mery and Lemery cite cases where fungi grew on the skins
of animals, even when not wrounded or ulcerated. Schoen-
lein and Remak observed, and Fuchs and Langenback
confirmed the observation, that forms, apparently vegeta-
ble, and of a fungiform structure, rooted themselves in
the skin of porrigo favosa. Gruby subsequently investi-
gated the subject more fully, and alleged that the crusts
of porrigo are almost entirely composed of the plants.
The vegetable nature of the disease seemed to be esta-
blished by the transfer of it by inoculation to a phanero-
gamic plant, thus imparting to a vegetable a disease con-
tagious in man.

Since these striking discoveries have been made, micro-
scopists have detected vegetations in porrigo lupinosa,
impetigo scrofulosa, serpiginous ulcers, sycosis menti, and
porrigo decalvans. To the latter, Gruby has given the
name of microsporon andouini, in honor of the able writer
on the muscardine of the silk-worm. We have now to
encounter among the phenomena of disease, porrigophytes,
mentagrophytes, &c. &c. Each disease has its fungus,
perfectly characterized by form, habits, position and pro-
pagation. For example, porrigophytes are seated in the
cells of the epidermis, while mentagrophytes reside in
follicles between the hair and the walls of the follicles.
The former have a proper capsule, are very rarely granular

FUNGI. 89

in the stem, and their spores are large and oval, while the
latter have no capsule, granules almost always appear in
the stem, and -the spores are small and round. The former
descend into the hair-follicles, the latter ascend from the
roots of the hair to the epidermis.

Not alone the skin, but the mucous membrane affords
a field for the growth of cryptogamous plants, at the ex-
pense of the health of that membrane. In the Oomptes
Rendus for 1842, M. Gruby describes a fungous plant,
which seemed to be the cause of the aphthae which so often
annoy sucking children, and are not unfrequently a tor-
ment to older persons. So minute is this plant, that each
little conical elevation of the milk thrush is composed of a
multitude of these vegetables, each having its leaflets,
branches and sporules. The roots are implanted in the
cells of the epithelion, and the spores are not more than
the one-ten thousandth of an inch in diameter, or about
a third of the diameter, or a ninth of the volume of a
blood-globule.*

Vogel, in the same year, discovered vegetable Paras in
the aphthae, and found their organic covering capable of
resisting the action of the water of ammonia and strong
acetic acid.

Dr. Berg, a Swedish physician, has since treated this
subject more at large, and shown that these aphthous pro-
tophytes are propagated not only from mouth to mouth, at
the usual temperature of the body, but that they can live,
and effect a reproduction out of the body, and at lower
temperatures, when placed in contact with substances con-

* The nucleolus in the cell-germ frequently appears immeasurably
small, or even entirely escapes the eye with the highest magnifying power,
yet it probably serves as an introduction to the whole formative process. —
Schleiden.

8*

90 INTERNAL FUNGI.

taining albumen, or any nitrogenous compounds. These
Paras are supposed, by Berg, to be active, even after being
dried, and he suggests the idea of their tVansmissibility
in this state through the atmosphere.

Dr. Arthur Farre, of London, read to the Microscopical
Society a paper on the minute structure of some cryptoga-
mous vegetable, which escaped in a kind of membranous
mass from the bowels of a female, who was slightly indis-
posed before, but who suffered severely for about twelve
hours immediately previous to their expulsion. Dr. Farre
was not able to refer them to known species, but supposes
that the reproductive spores may have been swallowed in
some beverage, and become so altered, by receiving supplies
from an organized surface, as to present new and un-
known appearances.*

Mr. Goodsir (Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ., vii.) de-
scribes curious vegetable organisms developed in the sto-
mach during indigestion. f

Mr. Gruby and Mr. Goodsir, without any concert, at dif-
ferent times and places, detected transparent nucleated
cells in the glands of Peyer, in a diseased state, from
typhoid fever. Whether these were animal or vegetable
cells could not be determined, but that they were vegeta-
ble germs is made probable by the subsequent discovery
by Schoenlein and Langenback, of organized vegetable
fungi in the body of a person who had died of typhoid
fever.

Hanover detected a species of leoptomitus agardh on the
mucous membrane of the mouth and tongue of two typhoid
patients, and also in the bladder of a young child.

* Confervse, discharged in a case of dysentery, are described by Dr. Bennett.

j*More recently, similar instances of this production, termed sardna by
Mr. Gcodsir, have been noticed in pyrosis, by Mr. Benjamin Bell, and Dr.
Wilson.

MUSCARDINE. 91

Rayer found byssoid vegetations on the pleura of a
tuberculous patient, and in the intestinal canal of a case
of pneumothorax.*

In 1838, Boehm published the discovery of vegetable
filaments on the mucous membrane of the intestines of
those who died of CHOLERA.

Quevenne and Hanover found the yeast plant (torula
cerevisiae) in diabetic urine.

The frequent action of the fungi in the production of
disease, is made analogically more probable by observing
also, how many diseases of the lower classes of animals are
obviously dependent on the assaults of the cryptogami.
Among the earliest observed and most thoroughly studied
of these diseases is that of the muscardine of the silk-worm.
This curious and costly malady was described for the first
time in 1835, by Bassi, of Lodi, andM. Balsano, of Milan.
Afterwards, in 1836, M. Andouin, who had devoted much
time and attention to the subject, published a work on it,
and in honor of the firsf describer gave to this deadly
vegetable enemy of the silk-worm the name of botrytte
bassiano. His statement is to the effect that there is
found in decaying or mouldy moss, a very minute fungus
which bears very small whitish spores. These, placed near
to the silk-worm, attach themselves to its surface, and by
some unexplained means, gain access to the pigment, un-
der the cuticle, and to the subcutaneous adipose tissue.
They are soon converted to the use of the vegetable; and
indeed the acute observer of this subject could mark the
transformation of the fatty tissue of the worm into radi-
cles of the cryptogamic vegetation. By degrees the plants

* Scherer, cited by Simon, describes, as being found in the peritoneal
cavity, after death by puerperal peritonitis, minute cells, organisms resem-
bling algce, granules and nuclei.

92 LEPROSY.

penetrate from within to the surface, where they have their
fructification, and whiten it with sporules. Thus created,
the germs attach themselves to other worms, and a conta-
gious disease, of vegetable origin, devastates the cocoonery
of the silk-producer.

The most curious part of this case is the capability of a
plant to live at the expense of either another vegetable or
of the silk- worm. A singular passage in the oldest book in
the world carries this idea even beyond modern discovery,
which, as often happens, seems to be rapidly approaching
to the truth, as announced three thousand years ago. In
the 13th and 14th chapters of Leviticus, where the subjects
of scall and leprosy are discussed, we find the following
singular language:

Chapter xiii. — " The garment also that the plague of
leprosy is in, whether it be in the warp or woof of linen or
woolen, whether in a skin or 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 showed unto the priest,
and the priest shall shut up the plague seven days. If
the plague be spread in the garment, the plague is a fret-
ting leprosy. He therefore shall burn that garment.

"If the plague be not spread in the garment, then the
priest shall command that they wash it, and shut it up
seven days, and behold if the plague have not changed its
color, it is unclean, and if the plague be somewhat dark
after the washing, he shall rend it out of the garment, and
if it still appear, it is a spreading plague, and then shall
burn that wherein the plague is."

Chapter xiv. — "The priest shall command that they
empty the house, and he shall look if the plague be in the
walls of the house, with hollow strakes, greenish or reddish,
which in sight are lower than the walls. Then the priest

LEPROSY. 93

shall shut up the house seven days, and shall look, and be-
hold if the plague be spread in the walls of the house, then
the priest shall command to remove the stones, and he
shall cause the house to be scraped within round about,
and they shall replace them with new stones, and they
shall take other mortar and plaster it. And if the plague
come again, and break out in the house, then the priest
shall come and look, and behold, if the plague be spread
in the house, it is a spreading leprosy, and he shall break
down the house. *

" This is the law for all manner of plague of leprosy and
scall, and for the leprosy of a garment and of a house."

There is here described a disease, whose cause must
have been of organic growth, capable of living in the
human being, and of creating there a foul and painful
disease of contagious character, whilst it could also live
and reproduce itself in garments of wool, linen, or skins;
nay more, it could attach itself to the walls of a house;
and there also effect its own reproduction. Animalcules,
always capable of choice, would scarcely be found so trans-
ferable; and we are therefore justified in supposing, that
green or red fungi, so often seen in epidemic periods,
were the protean disease of man, and his garment, and
his house.

Hecker also says, " These spots (signacula), and espe-
cially the blood spots (red cryptogami), were seen at a
very early period, as, for instance, in the sixth century;
and again during the plagues of 786 and 959, when it is
said to have been remarked, that those on whose clothes
they frequently appeared, and seemingly imparted to them
a peculiar odor, were more liable than others to an attack
of leprosy. Hence thay were named clothes leprosy
(lepra vestium)"

94 MOULDS

Continuing my enumeration of the fungous diseases of
animals, I cite Ehrenberg as having detected a vegetation,
clisetopliora meteorica, growing on the scales of the salmo
eperlanus, and creating disease. Henle has found vor-
ticellae on the toes of Tritons, producing gangrene and
death. Hanover saw another kind of vegetable, which,
accidentally attached to dead flies in damp places, could,
by inoculation, be communicated even to water sala-
manders. Dr. Stelling, of Cassel,. found similar products
on frogs, weakened by other experiments; and Valentine
tells us that Aeliyla prolifera, a kind of mould, very often
attacks animals, preventing the development of the ova of
fishes, and rapidly extending from an individual to a
group.

M. de Longchamps having occasion, in 1840, to dissect
an eider duck (anas molissima) while yet warm, found a
mould on the mucous surface of its air tubes. The mem-
brane beneath was diseased, and the spores of the plant
were little more than half the size of blood-globules.
Rousseau and Serrurier observed a different kind of mould
in pigeons and fowls, as well as in the cervus axis and
testudo indica. In a male parroquet, which died tuber-
culous, a greenish pulverulent mould was found on a false
membrane between the intestines and vertebral column.
Moulds in animals are also described by Muller, Retzius,
Mayer, Jaeger, Heusinger, Thiele, &c.

A stryx nictea (water fowl), brought alive from Lap-
land to Stockholm, died dyspnoeal. The lungs and tho-
racic cavities were found to be universally covered with
mushroom-like, flat, rounded bodies of a yellow-white
color, separable from the mucous membrane without in-
jury to its surface.

A falco rufus, in the zoological collection at Berlin,

IN ANIMALS. 95

was examined by Dubois, who found the same white um-
bilicoid bodies, quite fresh, in the air cavities, and also in
the abdominal cavity near the kidneys. Muller, Link,
Klotzsch, and others, declared them to be vegetables.

I fear, gentlemen, that I have wearied you by the cita-
tion of so many facts, which, all nearly alike, lose in-
terest by repetition. But, on new ground like this, you
must bear with me, if possible; as it is necessary to show,
by many witnesses, that fungi not only obviously produce
diseases, but that they must be absorbed and carried into
the circulation, as they are frequently found by the best ob-
servers in the world, even in the shut sacs of the body.

96 LATENCY.

LECTURE V.

EXPLANATORY CHARACTER OF OUR THEORY — LATENCY —
LIMITATION — DRYINGS — MOULDY SHEETS — YELLOW
FEVER — CHOLERA — TROPICAL HEALTH — SUCCESSION
OF EPIDEMICS.

A THEORY of malaria should not, in this enlightened
age, be received, "which does not, at least plausibly, ac-
count for the apparent irregularities, seeming contradic-
tions, and anomalous inconsistencies of the subject, which
now so greatly obscure all the usual modes of explanation.
In this respect I hope to show the very great superiority
of that which, I presume, is, by this time, not unfavoura-
bly viewed by my hearers. The diffusion of the fungi;
their properties as a class; their acknowledged power of
producing diseases of a febrile character, marked by pe-
riodicity; their nocturnal power and autumnal prevalence;
their love of the damp dark places in which febrile epi-
demics delight; their companionship with epidemics and
epizootics ; their obvious association with many cutaneous
and some mucous diseases; their production of some con-
tagious diseases of insects; and the progress of diseases
from cattle, which are sickened by eating mildewed food,
to human beings, sometimes by the use of the flesh, and
Sometimes, as in the cases reported by Vimat, by the
simple exaltation of epidemic influence : all these details,
numerous, diversified, and well sustained by authorities,

LATENCY. 97

should, I hope, induce my auditors to advance into the
subject of the present lecture with, at least, some par-
tiality for the new doctrine.

No one has yet attempted to explain satisfactorily the
cause of the latency of the malarious poison. " The
latent residence of narcotic marsh poison in the system,7'
says Stevens, "is incredible." Lind says, that a man
may be attacked by fever almost immediately after ex-
posure to its causes, or after a day or two, or even after
weeks. Usually the attack occurs within a few days of
the time of exposure, and often on the following day. It
is not easy to comprehend this, unless we suppose that the
poison received into the system, is organic and vital, and
that the phenomena of disease depend on its modification,
and reactions in the body. In this way we can also under-
stand how such a poison may remain dormant, like some
of the animal poisons, and that its absorbed germs may
be stimulated not only by time but season, following laws
which we are just beginning to study.

This study is, necessarily, very limited as yet, for we
are denied a direct examination, and trust often to ana-
logies, feeble sometimes, and at others scarcely perceptible.
On this part of the subject, as in one already discussed,
we can only examine the effects of visible fungi, when
swallowed, and trust to the light thus imperfectly obtained
for a farther progress. It is, however, a very curious
fact, that, of all the known poisons, that of the fungi lies
dormant in the system for the longest time.

One of the greatest peculiarities (Christison) of fun-
gous poison is, the interval before attack, and the difference
in that interval. He endeavors to explain both these
phenomena by ascribing them to the difficult solubility of
the poisonous matter, surrounded as it is by vegetable
9

98 LATENCY.

pulp and fibre. But, in the splendid work on mushrooms,
by M. Paulet, published in 1812, we are told that the ex-
tract and alcoholic tincture, and even the juice of the
agaricus bulbosus and vernus, when given to dogs, did not
make them sick in less than ten hours after their adminis-
tration.

Christison mentions the poisoning of six persons by the
Hypophyllum sanguineum or toad-stool (Puddock-stool),
in Scotland, most of whom were attacked, after the lapse
of twelve hours, one after twenty hours, one after twenty-
four hours, and the last in about thirty hours.

Gmelin quotes seventeen cases, which did not exhibit
symptoms of toxication until the expiration of a day and
a half after the meal at which the poison was swallowed.

Corvisart's journal relates, that of some soldiers, who ate
of the agaricus musearia, a part were attacked with gastric
symptoms almost immediately, but that others wrere indis-
posed only after the lapse of more than six hours, of
whom four died.

In the Histoire des Champignons of J. Roques, we are
told that a dog, fed on a patie made of the agaricus vene-
natus, exhibited symptoms of uneasiness only after an in-
terval of ten hours. The same author relates cases where
longer periods of time were necessary to develop the
poisonous effects of .the amanita citrina and the agaricus
maleficus.

We see, then, that the poison of the fungi may remain
apparently inactive for from an hour or two to even a day
and a half, and that, too, when swallowed in large quan-
tity. If we were now to look for any known poison as
explanatory of the latency of malaria, should we not be
inclined to say, that only that of the fungi exhibited, in
this respect, a strong analogy? We know of no other

LIMITATION. 99

morbific agent whose action is so uniformly and irregu-
larly postponed.

Nothing more startles the student, who has been taught
to believe in marsh or other exhalations as being the grand
cause of autumnal diseases, than when told, that often a
low wall, a common road, or a screen of trees, can, and
does, arrest the progress of marsh miasmata, though the
wind from the marsh whistles freely past them, bringing
with it even the paludal odor. He is also told by McCul-
loch, the great advocate of the vegeto-aerial theory, that
sometimes agues prevail exclusively on one side of a
street, and that inch by inch, and foot by foot, the site
of the Roman capital is invaded by malarious diseases.
The absurdity and inconsistency of these various posi-
tions strike at the very root of all the old theories.
On the other hand, when we suppose that the poison is a
fungous one, progressively marching over the soil, sus-
tained by the rich air and pregnant moisture from the
marsh', we can readily suppose that the wall, or the road,
or the wood, may limit its progress. Besides this, the
spores of all fungi are more or less electrical, and are,
therefore, likely to be arrested by the trees of a wood.

Authors have admitted that malaria appears to act in
many instances as if it could exert no power, except when
close to the spot where it originated, whilst in other cases,
it seems to be wafted to a great distance from its appa-
rent source. If we suppose the existence of germs sus-
ceptible of reproduction, and progressive growth, these
seeming contradictions fall at once. The interruption of
progress by a road or wall justifies this view of the mode
of conveyance, and the many facts which show the narrow
limits of the poisonous activity, enforce it strongly. The
place, the very spot, where the disease is found, must re-

100 LIMITATION.

produce the cause of it for itself, and if the conditions of
growth are not present, then will the spot be exempt, even
if very near to the most poisonous places. Thus may we,
and only thus, explain the occurrence of agues, yellow
fever, and cholera, on only one side of a house, or one
end of a room, or one si(^ of a street, or wall, or road.
A wind may indeed waft the spores in small quantity to a
distance, but unless there are there the conditions essen-
tial to an adequate reproduction, the spores must lie dor-
mant and harmless. For such reproduction, the marsh
mist may be one of the most important elements, but that
alone will not suffice, since we know that the disease is
not proportional to its frequency or intensity. Other and
very local conditions seem to exercise a peculiar power.
Thus a new house is known to resist disease better than
an old one, and a residence protected by an annual culti-
vation, immediately around it, is more safe than one which
is encircled by lawns in grass. During some unusually
sickly years, when scarcely an inhabitant of the skirts of
the city escaped marsh fever, the wind set, often for a
long period, directly from the infected regions into the
heart of the city. In perhaps half a minute from the
time when the south-western air left the meadows and
pestilential borders of the town, it had crept into every
chamber of the place; yet physicians here, well know that
no disease of a malarious character invaded these cham-
bers, which were, most of them, left open during every
night of the sultry autumn.

Writers entitled to credit and authority, by position
and professional character, assert, that a gauze veil, or a
gauze screen in a window, adds much to the security of
the wearer or the occupant of a chamber, in even the most
unsound places. We can scarcely see how any gas or

EFFECTS OF DRYING. 101

vapour, simple or compound, could be arrested by such a
defence ; but it is easy to suppose the detention of organ-
ized and comparatively bulky bodies electrical and glu-
tinous, or moist.

However intense may be the virulence of a miasmatic
atmosphere, its powers are greatly abated by artificially
drying it. Hence, wood-cutters and waterers on the coast
of Africa, find it advantageous to kindle a number of fires
in the vicinity even of their sultry work. Lind attributed
the greater health of the ship Edgar, compared with that
of her consort, to the location of her cooking apparatus,
" between decks." Folchi, a Roman writer, says, "many
persons are known to me who have, during many years,
preserved themselves from fever, in the worst parts of the
country around Rome, by adopting the most rigid cau-
tion in retiring within their houses before evening, closing
the windows, warming the rooms, and taking care not to
go out in the morning until the sun has been some time
above the horizon." Old John Kaye speaks of the ex-
emption of cooks and smiths from the sweating sickness.
(Sudor. Angl.} There is no other poison, save that of
the fungi, so far as we know, which is thus disarmed by
dryness and heat. In any view of the case, the fact is
inexplicable unless we suppose an organic cause, to which
the absence of humidity is antagonistic.

Immemorially, the sleeping in damp sheets has been
thought hazardous to health ; but the keepers of hotels
and boarding-houses know that the danger is very slight,
unless the sheets have been put away in a damp state, and
have acquired a mouldy smell. The constant practice of
the hydropathists shows the little hazard of a wet sheet,
while daily experience demonstrates the certainty of at
least stiffened and painful muscles, and an arrest of the

9*

102 FOMITES.

Schneiderian secretions, after spending an hour or two be-
tween damp and musty bed-clothes. The Scottish High-
landers are said to dip themselves, dress and all, into the
sea, when obliged to sleep out of doors, after being
drenched by rain. As water is supposed to act unfavour-
ably by means of its coldness, we cannot easily explain
the known benefit of this substitution, except by a refer-
ence to the acknowledged power of salt to prevent the
growth of fungi.

It may seem rather curiously nice to notice another
point connected with this part of our subject; but as you
are all students now, and will, I hope, become true scholars
hereafter, I will observe, that every one who searches
for knowledge among old books and manuscripts, has been
occasionally attacked by sternutation, and at least a tem-
porary coryza, when he has disturbed the dust which has
long slumbered within their leaves. As the dust of a
room swept daily, and the pulverulent clouds of a summer
road do not so affect him, he seizes his microscope and
detects the cause of his sufferings, in the numerous organic
spores which have grown into power to torment, among
the dampness and darkness of the leafy envelopes.*

We can scarcely doubt the events recorded by Lind,
Rush, Webster, Hosack, and others, of the partial intro-
duction of yellow fever into places always otherwise ex-
empted from it, by trunks of unwashed clothes, brought
from infected regions. Boerhaave, Cullen, Lind and Rus-
sell think fomites, which are soiled and placed in a con-
fined depository, are more to be dreaded than the excre-
tions of the sick.

* My distinguished friend, Professor Hare, finds this experiment among
his old papers, even a hazardous one, as it always seriously affects his
health.

FOM1TES. 103

Hosack asserts, that the virus is, under such circum-
stances, augmented in quantity.

Hecker, to whose opinions I have already referred, holds
that fomites may even aggravate tJte infectious powers of a
virus.

Doctor Rush mentions one trunk-case, in detail, and
says that he heard of two other instances, in all of which
only those suffered who opened the packages. According
to William Stevens of Santa Cruz, " The poison is made
more intense ~by being confined in clothes and bedding."

In 1747, the trunk of a young supercargo who died at
Barbadoes, was opened in Philadelphia in the presence of
Mr. Powell, Mr. Hatton, three Welshmen, a cooper and a
boy of Mr. Powell's: all sickened, and died of yellow fever
within a few days.

"I have seen the cases of some servants in Mr. O.'s
family, attacked by yellow fever, upon receiving the cloth-
ing of a relative who had died of that disease in the West
Indies, at a time, too, when no yellow fever prevailed in
New York." (Hosack.)

On the same authority, we learn that, after the death by
yellow fever of the late Gardiner Baker, whilst on a visit
to Boston, where it prevailed epidemically, his clothes
were sent home to his wife, then a resident of Long Island.
The opening of the trunk was followed by yellow fever, of
which Mrs. Baker died. No disease of the kind existed at
that time in New York or its vicinity.

A recent report to the Legislature of New York on the
subject of Quarantine, contains unanswerable facts of this
kind, both numerous and well authenticated. Were yel-
low fever a contagious disease, these examples of propaga-
tion by fomites might be easily explained; but as its non-
contagiousness is clearly shown, by even stronger testimony
than that above cited in favor of introduction by fomites,

104 YELLOW FEVER.

we are left to explain the difficulty, as best we may, con-
sistently with a belief in its importation by trunks and
clothes, and a thorough conviction of its total want of con-
tagious power. There is left but one escape, and that lies
in the supposition that fungi, when lodged in the trunks
among filth and animal matter, find, in darkness and
dampness, the fittest imaginable growing place. That, in
scarcely any of these cases, the disease advanced beyond
those who inspected or handled the clothes, is only proof
of the usual difficulty of sowing successfully tropical
seeds in temperate climates, and of the inaptitude of fungi
to grow under any but the nicely adjusted conditions upon
which many of the tribe rely. Were I disposed to sup-
port farther the opinion just defended, I might cite Dr.
John Bard of New York, Dr. Lining of Charleston, the
late Dr. John C. Otto, Drs. Bond, Cadwallader and Gra-
ham of the last century, Dr. Holt of New Orleans, Dr. W.
S. W. Ruschenberger, Dr. Joseph Bailey, Dr. Westerveldt,
Dr. Vache, and a host of others of the present day for
examples of propagation by trunks and clothes.

Of a similar character is the question of the importation
of yellow fever in ships. From the angrily mooted case
of the Hanckey, in 1793, by which the yellow fever was
brought from Africa to the island of Grenada, to that of
the Eclair Steamer, which, in 1845, carried it from the
same coast to Buena Vista, and even to England, there has
been a tempestuous dispute about importation and conta-
gion. The contagionists point to the Bann at ascension,
and even at Bahia, and to the Buck at Bristol, a high and
healthy village on the Delaware, and to the Vanda at the
usually salubrious town of Roundout, one hundred miles up
the North River, as evidence of importation, and, of course,
of contagion. They can go even further, and show that there
are at least eighty recorded examples of the production of

YELLOW FEVER. 105

yellow fever in unusual places by vessels which came
from its ordinary habitat.

On the other hand, physicians very generally reject the
doctrine of its contagiousness, because it is not carried
about by infected persons, because its victims, however
much crowded together in a hospital which is removed to
a short distance from the infected spot, do not produce it
in those who visit or nurse them, or sleep with them at
night. Persons thus habitually exposed, show their sus-
ceptibility, by suffering an attack by visiting, even for a
few minutes, only the open streets of the morbific place.
This objection is so strong as to throw the contagionists
into all kinds of devices to defend their untenable position;
such as, conditional contagion, contingent contagion, con-
current local causes, tertium quids, between the imported
and local agents, all of which, entirely hypothetical, de-
pend for existence, even in the minds of their expounders,
upon the first assumption, the contagion of yellow fever ;^
an assumption which owes its acceptability solely to the \
fact of importation in ships, and propagation by fomites,
together with the hitherto insuperable difficulty of giving
to it a different explanation. " There is our position !'
say they to their opponents; " destroy it if you can!"
The opponents are reduced to the necessity of giving to
numerous well attested phenomena a flat denial. The
anti-contagionists, on the other hand, point to the dispers-
ing invalids of a pestilential city, and ask, why they carry
not disease to the country. They exult in the immunity
of the hospitals, and, in their turn, inquire with confidence,
" Where is your contagion?" They are answered by sub-
tleties, and suppositions, and hypotheses. Is not all this
very contrary to the true spirit of philosophy ? Would it
not be better to admit that yellow fever is often imported

106 YELLOW FEVER.

in ships, is now and then carried in trunks, and may pos-
sibly be sometimes an accident of the locality ? Might it
not be also said, that we know of no contagious disease
which presents any analogy to the contingent contagion
claimed for yellow fever, and that, therefore, we must, for
the present, suppose that it is portable and yet is not con-
tagious ?

If I have made a good footing for the fungi, as pro-
ducers of diseases very like to yellow fever, I may be in-
dulged in my hypothesis, which alleges, that a tropical
fungus, carried off in dark, damp, animalized holds of ships,
or in the offensive clothes of sick or dead seamen, may be
introduced into the summer-clime of unaccustomed places,
and there, as it came from, may go to, the shore, and
be sometimes reproductive. May I not suppose that
the germs, when once ashore, may slowly migrate land-
wards, and even by chance be carried or wafted to other
neighboring spots, where they may grow, and create new
foci of disease? that the requirements of an exotic may
make such visitations rare, and such dispersions unusual?
and that the equatorial plants may be nipped, and even
totally destroyed by an unaccustomed frost ?

Through this theory of ours, we can easily see why the
disease may be imported, why it is imported rarely, and
why it makes so slow a progress from the spot to which
originally brought. It will, also, explain its non-conta-
gious character, and even its occasional but rare visit to a
village or hamlet. It may also account for its apparently
spontaneous appearance in such places as Charleston, Sa-
vannah and New Orleans, in which the winter may not be
severe enough to kill the germs, but yet may so affect
them as to make their reaction difficult or partial.

It is only thus that we can comprehend how a perfectly

CHOLERA. 107

healthy crew may bring with them, in the closed hold of
their ship, the germs of disease, which, after their dismis-
sal, may pestilentially affect the " stevedores" who dis-
charge her, or only the laborers ivho disturb her ballast.

We can thus, too, explain the usual pause between the
first set of cases caught by visitors to, or laborers on
board, the ship, and the attack upon the inhabitants of
the vicinity. This curious interval, noticed by almost
every writer, occupies about ten to fifteen days, whilst
the period of incubation, after exposure to a known source
of infection, is only about five days. (Vach£.)

This interval is only to be explained by the supposition
that germs, of some kind, have gained a footing on shore,
and have germinated and grown more numerous. It is the
crop in the hold which produces the first set of cases* It
is the crop on the land which causes the second.

It is only through the action of some organic cause, that
we can explain the tenacity of the attachment of yellow
fever to certain ships, and these, too, among the cleanest
and best aired vessels in the British service. The Sybille
had three several epidemic attacks between the 23d of
June, 1829, and the middla of April, 1830. Two of these
occurred while at sea. In the West India service, cer-
tain ships have usually an outbreak on going into even a
healthy harbor.

Perhaps no disease has so much puzzled the etiologist
as cholera. Its singular local origin, its yet more singular
progress, its apparent inconsistencies, its diffusion from a
tropical point over the habitable globe, and especially its
invasion, in winter, of the frozen steppes of Tartary and
Russia, all tend to confuse the observer of epidemics. At
one time, slowly, against the monsoon, it advances on a
long geographical line, at the rate of from one to two

108 CHOLERA.

miles a day, whilst at another, it flies on the wings of
commerce, almost as fast as there are means of convey-
ance for men and merchandize. At one time, it ascends
or descends along the valley of an innavigable stream,
slowly and regularly, as if progressive by its own loco-
motion ; at another, it flies with the ship or the loco-
motive, across seas and continents. A stranded vessel
throws it upon the shore of a lonely sea-island, (Dick-
son.) One ship conveys it from Dublin to the St. Law-
rence,* another meets it in the midst of the Atlantic ', and
carries it to New York,f while a third, from the same
source,J deposits it at New Orleans. Steamers scatter it
far and wide as they ascend from New Orleans to the
various branches of the river above. Contagion might ex-
plain the progress, where there are always materials to
form a line of march, but contagion cannot account for
its solitary advance over untravelled wastes or untenanted
seas. Contagion cannot explain its presence in the atmo-
sphere of the mid-ocean, nor its manner of assailing a city
at once, at its most opposite points. Contagion is at fault
as explanatory of the exemption of classes, the almost ex-
clusive invasion of low, damp, dirty habitations, and the
uniform appearance of a general premonitory state, be-
fore the irruption of the cholera itself.

The attacks of cholera within a few hours after expo-
sure to infection, the introduction into hospitals of large

* The Carricks. f The packet ship New York.

J The ship S wanton, Captain Duncan, from the healthy port of Havre,
was assailed by cholera after being at sea for twenty-eight days, (Lat. 25° N.,
Long. 57° W.,) and after losing fifteen persons in thirteen days, she arrived
in the Mississippi, five days before the epidemic outbreak at New Orleans.

The Ship New York, also from Havre, was attacked at sea, sixteen days
out, and arrived at Staten Island, two days before the cholera appeared at
the New York Quarantine Station. (Whiting.)

CHOLERA. 109

numbers of cholera-patients, whilst the old inmates en-
joyed complete immunity, as at the Odinka, at St. Peters-
burgh, the diseased condition of a single vessel, the Dread-
naught, in the Thames, in 1837, the great exemption of
physicians and nurses, the attack of the old rather than of
the young, or of those at puberty, all militate against the
notion of a propagation by contagion.

On the other hand, many cases are cited where the
cholera came with bodies of men, caravans, and ships, and
seemed to be propagated by personal communication. At
one time it confined itself to one wing of an army; at an-
other, it spread progressively from left to right, along the
line of encampment. Sometimes it affected but one out of
thirty men in each of a great number of large tents, and
sometimes it restricted itself to one or two such tents,
which it completely desolated. No wonder that men
were puzzled and perplexed, being contagionists at one
time and place, and anti-contagionists at another. No
wonder that Mojon and Holland should have endeavored
to avoid the difficulty by reverting to the exploded doc-
trine of Kircher and Linnaeus, the animalcular theory of
disease.

The animalcular, being an organic theory, would ex-
plain well enough, the phenomena of progress, were it not
for the apparent absurdity of supposing that animalcules
of tropical origin could exist and procreate in a Russian
winter. The want of proof that aniinalculae are poison-
ous, or that they fulfil the conditions for such a theory,
has been already stated.

But if we assume for cholera a fungous origin, all dif-
ficulties vanish; and, as in the case of yellow fever, an
easy explanation may be given of every apparent incon-
gruity. We have only to suppose, what is known to hap-
10

110 CHOLERA.

pen in other cases, that the fungi, on which cholera is
assumed to depend, acquire at times, as do the germs of
some contagious diseases, an unusual power of reproduc-
tion and diffusion, a greater potency of expansion. Such
germs may be carried by men, and goods, and ships, or
may make a slower progress by their own unaided ac-
tivity, or be scattered by the winds, to regerminate,
wherever special conditions are found. Thus can we see
why the poison prefers the route of streams, or infests
the damp parts of cities; and why classes living in clean
apartments in dry districts, suffer so little.

"VVe can see why women escape better than men, why
both cholera and yellow fever, by the natural tendency of
the vegetable cause to the organs of generation, almost al-
ways cause miscarriage of pregnant women, and why,
when a city or country is unhealthy, the fungiferous
causes of death, by over-stimulating the organs of repro-
duction, usually make a compensation by the births, for
the unusual mortality.

Can we not thus explain the appearance of contagion,
where there is no contagion, and the absence of contagion
while there is an obvious conveyance of the epidemic poi-
son from place to place?

We are no longer surprised to learn that cholera ad-
vanced regularly from the tent nearest to the water, to
the others successively, until it reached the end of the
lines; nor do we feel astonished that it was, in another
case, confined to the tent nearest the tank, or to the flank
company, or the brigade on the left or right of the army.
We now see why ninety men detached from a large corps,
and attacked on the first night of absence, on the borders
of a lake, were, without damage to the corps, promiscu-
ously mingled again with it, after being brought back,

THE PLAGUE. Ill

totally disabled, to the original encampment. We can
understand now, how, in the Odinka Hospital, whose sa-
lubrity was previously proved by the absence of cholera
during an epidemic at St. Petersburgh, its eight hundred
inmates continued in their usual health, despite the intro-
duction from without of five hundred cases of cholera.
We can see how a corps, in its march through an irregu-
larly infected country, may acquire and lose the cholera
several times; how a healthy corps may enter a sickly
army, en route, and not suffer from the prevailing malady.
The diffusion, the limitation, the leaving the infection be-
hind, or the carrying it forward, all admit of an easy ex-
planation, if we assume the hypothesis that germs or spores,
created exteriorly to the body, are the seminia morbi,
and that they are liable to the usual accidents by which
seeds are conveyed, or lost, or favored or repressed.

It would now weary you, my young friends, were I to
carry you over the same twice-trodden ground, in an en-
deavor to apply to the phenomena of the origination and
propagation of THE PLAGUE, the same explanatory theory.
It fits it quite as well, nay, in some respects even more
perfectly than it does the etiology of cholera and yellow
fever, but, after what has been said, you can yourselves
make the application.

In pursuit of our task of explanation, I am bound to f '
give a reason for the extraordinary exemption of Brazil^- ,
New Holland, and the Polynesian Islands, from malarious }
diseases. They are volcanic, or organic, or alluvial. They
have rank vegetation, and heat and moisture, as demanded
by McCulloch, and sulphur-products as called for by Daniel
and Gardiner, and a soil in process of drying after being
wet, as suggested by Ferguson. They have the exuber-
ance of vegeto-organic life of Armstrong and Doughty,

112 EXCEPTIONAL PLACES.

and yet they are not infested by malarious diseases. Not
a shadow of explanation, do any of these hypotheses offer
of this anomaly. But if we assume the fungous theory as a
basis of explanation, we may readily believe, nay, certainly
might know, that such exceptions are, on the doctrine of
chances, to be expected. No plant is everywhere, and
such plants as are here alluded to, are especially capri-
cious in habits and actions, according to causes which,
though yet unstudied, obviously control them. On our
theory, the occasional exception should be looked for; on
any general chemical, or mechanical, or atmospheric the-
ory, it is inexplicable. Under such a view, we are not
astonished at finding Brazil healthy and Africa pestilen-
tial ; for their obvious, much more their minute vegetation,
is so dissimilar as to render a difference in their invisible
phytology highly probable.

These considerations naturally lead us to inquire why
the febrile diseases of various countries differ so much.
Why have we no yellow fever in Brazil, or India, or Egypt,
and why no plague in Florida or Calcutta ? It is for the
reason, that, though of the same great general class, the
fungi differ greatly from each other in special properties,
and that the protophytes of each country, although many
of them are nearly alike, present some of them, almost
contrasted properties. The agaricus clypeatus of the west
of Europe, poisons in one way, the amanita muscaria of
Siberia in another. One irritates, the other intoxicates.
So, a certain kind of mucor produces dysentery, another
typhoid symptoms, and a third excessive vomiting. The
ergot of rye excites formication, fever and sphacelation, the
ergot of maize, fever, loss of hair and nails. Is it then, a
matter of special wonder, if a fungus with one set of pro-
perties, should germinate in India, another in Egypt, and
a third in Cuba.

QUARANTINES. 113

Nor should we be astonished at finding a surprising fe-
cundity at certain times in certain classes of plants, by
means of which they not only multiply prodigiously on
their customary soil, but readily advance beyond their
wonted boundaries. In this way I may explain the ra-
vages of the plague in Europe, and of the yellow fever in
North America and Spain; and account for the intrusion
of cholera upon European ground, and its failure to main-
tain its conquests for any prolonged period of time. The
plague retreats back to the Nile, Euphrates,* and Dan-
ube, its native home, the cholera withdraws to Hindostan,
and the yellow fever to the southern coast of America and
to the West Indies. It is twenty-six years since yellow
fever visited Philadelphia. During that time, there have
been many seasons of as great heat and drought as in
1793 and 1798, and, every year, arrive at our wharves,
vessels from infected ports; but the germs of disease do
not bear transportation always, and our fungiferous tend-
encies at home have not invited a visit. Long may it so
be in both respects!

To speak of quarantine regulations, does not come pro-
perly within the scope of my subject, but the importance
of the question may perhaps excuse me for the suggestion
that, on the principles here "laid down, the detention at
quarantine even of the sick, is, for yellow fever and
cholera, unnecessary; while the importance of detaining

* At Erzcroum, the capital of Armenia, the winters are cold, the ther-
mometer rarely rising above 32° F. and descending often as low as 25° or
even 20°. In summer the heat has a range of from 66° to 81° 5 — ; yet
this place and its adjacent villages, seem to generate the plague. It ap-
peared there in 1840, about the middle of August, and in 1841, in the be-
ginning of July.

10*

114 DISEASES EN SUITE.

and purifying cargoes and soiled baggage, becomes appa-
rently more imperative.

I alluded, in the last paragraph, to the fungiferous tend-
encies at home, by which, may be invited from abroad,
an exotic fungus. This idea affords an explanation of a
fact universally noticed, but not easily otherwise explained.
I mean the growth of various diseases of a common cha-
racter, before the irruption of a great pestilence. If these
depend upon a fungous origin, their growth will be aug-
mented by the augmentation of their cause, until the
foreign intruder, urged by a new and inherent impulse,
and welcomed by a domestic facilitation, enters upon a
career of desolation. The fungiferous exaltation is
shown by the early ripening and imperfect maturation of
fruits and even roots, whose organs of reproduction are,
by invisible ergots, over-stimulated. The decay of roots
and fruits, the tainting of meats, and the moulding of
other things, are but parts of the unwholesome "crypto-
gamisin," which at length, intrudes upon living things;
when murrain among cattle, and pestilence among men,
complete the history of a calamitous period.

Similar principles seem to govern the movements of
diseases now generally acknowledged to proceed from
germs. The contagious maladies, small-pox, measles,
scarlatina and hooping-cough, are almost always present
in some part of a great metropolis, or at least in some
part of a great country; yet their tendency to propagation
is often, for years, so slight as to confine their ravages to
a small number of victims. But at times, and sometimes
after long intervals of comparative inactivity, these affec-
tions suddenly acquire a wondrous expansibility. Their
germs are scattered far and wide. The slightest exposure
brings on disease, and where but a few individuals suffered,

SLUMBER OF OLD EPIDEMICS. 115

thousands are attacked. A careful examination of the
meteorological conditions affords no shadow of explana-
tion. At all temperatures, in every variety of humidity,
beneath every kind of skyey influence, these diseases be-
come epidemic. Time seems to have for them some kind
of bonds, for they seldom continue epidemic long, and do
not usually return as such, for a lapse of years. Ac-
cording to Humboldt, small-pox becomes epidemic in South
America, about once in from fifteen to twenty years, and
that sometimes without a known re-introduction. These
outbreaks seem to depend rather on germinal power than
extrinsic enforcement, and remind one of the locusts,
wrhich, though every year present in small numbers, ap-
pear by myriads at periods of from seven to seventeen
years. As the larvae of these insects lie deeply buried in
the earth, beyond the reach of anything but the mean
annual moisture and temperature, which are but slightly
varied, we have yet to learn what spell it is, which calls
them in countless throngs, into active existence.

The plague-spell has not darkened the portals of Chris-
tian Europe for more than one hundred years, and the
sudor anglicanus has not floated on its fetid mists, since
the House of Tudor resigned to the Stuarts the throne of
England,. But these genii of a former age are but asleep.
Their time is not yet. When they shall again recover
their germinal vigor, and pass beyond their wonted limits,
or awake from their long repose, they will retain probably,
as before, their new activity or more extended dominion,
for a series of years. It is true that a happier age, in
comfort and cleanliness, and medical knowledge, has
arrived to check their progress, and to limit their deadli-
ness ; but it is vain to hope that any disease has been en-
tirely eradicated, or any germ totally lost. In a few

116 CHOLERA.

years the cholera will, according to pestilential usage, re-
tire to its old limits, and there perhaps seem to expire,
until forgotten and contemned, it will, after a long repose,
burst again over the fields of India, and the realms of
Europe and America.*

* Since this paragraph was written the cholera has returned to Europe
and America, unchanged in character, and unmodified in severity. Again,
it haunts damp rural places, and offensive urban localities. Again, it se-
lects its victims from amongst the poor, who are destitute of the oppor-
tunity of defending themselves from the circumambiency of the provoca-
tives of infection. Filth, dampness, and innutrition ; fatigue, bad habits,
and neglect of premonitions, doom these unfortunates to the superadded
evils of pestilence, torture, and death.

CONTRASTS. 117

LECTURE VI.

EXPLANATORY CHARACTER, OF OUR THEORY — CONTRAST
OF THE HEALTH OF SEASONS AND PLACES. — SUDDEN
ONSETS IN AFRICA. — THE MAREMMA — VOLCANIC ERUP-
TIONS.— SPUR TO VEGETATION. — REVOLUTIONS IN LOCAL
HEALTH. — FAIRY RINGS. — NON-RECURRENCE OF SOME
DISEASES. — LIEBIG'S THEORY. — EPIDEMIC MOST FATAL
AT ITS ONSET. — DRY SANDY PLAINS SICKLY. — RECAPITU-
LATION.

INDEPENDENTLY of any observable cause, the crops of
various kinds differ in a remarkable manner in different
seasons. Most of you must have seen the wonderful pro-
duction of the fruits of all kinds in certain autumns. A
year or two since, the trees actually bent down and broke
under the immense load of apples, which were left to rot
in the fields in many places, for want of the means of se-
curing them. No cause for this exuberance was observ-
able. Farmers sometimes have good crops even in oppo-
sition to the inclemency of the season, and as often, under
the most auspicious meteorology, are chagrined at the un-
accountable shriveling, or paucity of their grain. So is it
with the fungi, which, in opposition to hostile meteoration,
spring up in unusual places, or abound prodigiously in cus-
tomary positions. Thus in 1798, a year of protracted heat
and drought, Condie and Folwell reported, as remarkable,
the abundant production of various classes of mushrooms.

118 CONTRASTS OF CLIMATE.

So, were there unaccountable moulds and mildews, in the
driest periods of the pestilential years, in New York, Phi-
ladelphia, and Natchez. Sometimes but one kind of germ
is stimulated, as in the case of the apples already cited,
sometimes many are excited, as in some years of great and
general "pomonal" luxuriancy. So is it with the fungi,
as manifested by the extension of only one disease, or
the co-existence of many. Of all plants, the cryptogami
are the most capricious, or most susceptible of modification
by unseen causes. Hence the quality of the season is
scarcely ever an index to the morbid condition of any
particular year, although heat, moisture and a redundant
vegetation are general precursors of malarious action.

We can, on our hypothesis, easily explain the arrival
of the annual morbid orgasm, after the rains of one coun-
try, and in the rains of another. Whether hot or cool,
wet or dry, the sickly season is the harvest time of the
fungi, which lie tied by time and not by circumstance,
until their customary period of activity has arrived; when
more or less stimulated by moisture, and food, and elec-
tricity, they show a feeble or a strong fecundity.

On our supposition alone, can we account for the sudden
effect, in Africa, of the first rains. The dry season bakes
the earth to a crust. The lesser vegetation is dried up
under the scorching glare of a tropical sun, and nature
seems almost at a stand. That is there, the season of
health. But the rains commence, and almost in a moment,
arises a morbid influence inexplicable by reference either
to heat or moisture, or any ordinary decomposition. " The
rain had scarcely commenced," says Mungo Park, "before
many of the soldiers were affected with vomiting. Others
fell asleep, and seemed as if intoxicated. I felt a strong
inclination to sleep during the storm, and as soon as it

CONTRASTS OF CLIMATE. 119

was over, I fell asleep on the wet ground, although I used
every exertion to keep myself awake. Twelve of the sol-
diers were ill next day." Only some of the fungi, whose
rapidity of growth is wonderful, and whose power of caus-
ing vomiting, drowsiness and intoxication is acknow-
ledged, can be plausibly brought to explain the phenomena
described by Park. The very sudden production of ex-
cessive mould on everything, so as to rot to its centre in
forty-eight hours, a piece of cloth or leather, evinced the
fungiferous force of the African rainy season. Moisture
and heat alone could not produce such effects, for in Brazil
no such phenomena are observed or recorded, although the
rains are as heavy and the temperature even a little
higher.

Contrasted with Africa, is a spot almost as unhealthy as
" The- Coast." While the latter is low, wet, marshy and
filled with the rankest vegetation, the Maremma of Tus-
cany and the Roman States is high, dry, free from per-
ceptible moisture, and used chiefly as pasture-grounds,
which are in no respect unusually fertile or productive.
Yet the Maremma, throughout its extended domain of
nearly one hundred miles in length, is scourged by the
most intense forms of malarious fevers. The campagna
di Roma, so celebrated for its pernicious fevers, is included
in the Maremma.

This apparent deviation from the healthfullness, which
should pertain to a country so dry, and so free from marshes
and streams, has always presented to the miasmatists an es-
pecial stumbling block ; and a clever writer seems to think
that a general malarious theory cannot be accredited by
the profession, which will not explain satisfactorily the
cause of the unexpected insalubrity of the Maremma.

The surface of the Maremma is formed throughout of

120 THE MAREMMA.

volcanic tufa, which, when sufficiently softened, forms a
pasturage, on which feed large herds of cattle. It con-
tains the finest pastures of Italy, -on the soil of which are
commingled the ordure of cattle and the disintegrated
tufa. The former is known to be a favorite growing
ground of the fungi, and the latter, I shall now proceed to
show, is even better calculated for the same offices.

According to M. Roques, the fine mushroom, polyporus
tuberaster, of the Italians, grows in the environs of Naples,
upon a species of volcanic tufa, very porous and of an ar-
gillo-calcareous nature. In the pores of this stone, is de-
posited the matrix of the plant, from which, when moist-
ened and shaded, grow up vast mushrooms, four or five
inches high, and eight or ten inches broad. These stones
are sent to France and England, where they are used as
in Italy, for the production of mushrooms. The English
Philosopher, Boyle, first described this stone, under the
title of Lapis Lyncurias ; "which," to use his own lan-
guage, "rubbed, moistened, and warmed, will, in a very
short time, produce mushrooms fit to be eaten." Old John
Hill, who wrote, a century ago, a volume on Materia Me-
dica, published a book entitled "Lapis Fungifer," in which
he describes a stone of this kind, in the possession of Lady
Stafford. It was a hard, heavy mass, of an irregular shape,
and granulated texture, like shagreen leather. This formed
the nidus for the perennial root of a fungus superior to
common mushrooms. One of these fungi weighed, accord-
ing to Hill, two pounds two ounces, and measured six and
a-half inches on the head. The Doctor presumes that the
Lapis Violaceus of the Germans is of a similar nature.

The Neapolitans bring the tufa used in their horticul-
tural processes, from Calabria, where are found the sam-
ples of that volcanic earth, of the finest quality. It is

THE MAREMMA. 121

placed for cryptogamous purposes, in shaded excavations,
or in natural caves, or in cellars, where, by its means, are
produced vast quantities of the best mushrooms.

In the Maremma, where the volcanic tufa is the basis
of the soil, the surface is intermixed with the animal re-
mains of departed empires, and the ordure of cattle, is
covered with grasses of old pasturages, and is wet with
heavy dews. Everything, therefore, conspires there to
a fungiferous end. The tufa is fungiferous, the manure
is fungiferous, old pastures are always fungiferous, and
the dews of the Maremma not only make night fungi-
ferously hideous ; but, by their chilly humectation, act as
excitants of the train of nervous symptoms, and, as does
driving the cattle in the milk-sickness, they bring on an
attack, which, but for this element of the suite, might
have been escaped. Instead, therefore, of being surprised
at the ascendancy of malarious diseases in the Maremma,
we should feel at a loss for a mode of explaining any want
there, of a miasmatic predominancy.

The fungiferous productiveness of the volcanic soil of
Italy, is shown by reference to the report of Professor
Sanguinetti, Official Inspector of the Fungi at Rome.
Not having access to the original, I quote from Dr. Bad-
ham's beautiful work on "The Esculent Funguses of Eng-
land." "For forty days in autumn, and for about half
that period every \ spring, large quantities of funguses,
picked in the immediate vicinity of Rome, from Frascati,
Rocca di Papa, and Albano, are brought in at the differ-
ent gates.

" The return of taxed mushrooms in the city of Rome,

gives a yearly average of between 60 and 80,000 pounds

weight, and if we double this amount, as we may safely

do, in order to include the smaller untaxed parcels, the

11

122 VOLCANIC EPIDEMICS.

commercial value is upwards of 2000?. sterling. (10,000
dollars.) But the fresh funguses form only a small part
of the whole consumption, to which must be added the
dried, the pickled, and the preserved."

Thus about 140,000 pounds of mushrooms are sold in
Rome, a weight equal to that of 175 oxen.

A reference to the fungiferous power of the tufas ena-
bles us to explain a hitherto most puzzling fact, as recorded
by many authors, and as specifically treated by writers
on epidemics. It is remarked by Webster, and Hecker,
as well as by other writers, that volcanic eruptions and
earthquakes, when productive of disease, do not cause it
immediately, nor even in the current year, but usually in
that which follows it. If mephitic vapors or gases were
the cause of the epidemics in such cases, immediate con-
sequences should ensue ; but if the volcanic ashes, or the
sulphur and calcareous products, excite the disease by
evoking excessively the common cryptogamic growths, or
exciting into action, the long slumbering spores of new or
unusual protophytes, we ought to find their record in the
morbid history of the succeeding year or years. So we
learn that the year 79 of our era, was marked ly no un-
usual mortality, although Vesuvius darkened, by its ejected
ashes, the sun itself, and scattered its products through
the atmosphere even to Syria and Africa. Herculaneum
and Pompeii were so deeply buried as to be lost for nearly
1700 years, and the soil of Italy, from the Alps to Sicily,
was dusted with the furnace-formed products of the vol-
cano. But in the following year, when the now acknow-
ledged fungiferous properties of the tufous ashes could
exert on the soil their stimulating influence, disease deso-
lated Italy, and a plague raged with resistless power.
That fatal epidemic destroyed daily, for a prolonged sea-
son, 10,000 inhabitants of Rome. (Webster.)

CAPRICE OF MALARIA. 123

One other difficulty remains to be removed, and I shall
then, gentlemen, leave this subject for your future con-
sideration, and, if worthy of it, your future investigation.
Writers on malaria not unfrequently complain of the un-
accountable irregularity of miasmatic action. Attributing,
as they usually do, the diseases of the autumn to vegetable
or other decomposition, they are disturbed by finding not
the slightest relation between the supposed cause and the
alleged effect. Heat, moisture, and vegetation being the
concurrent elements of their theory, some proportion
should be observed between the amount of these, and the
intensity or diffusiveness of malaria. But, alas for the
speculation, disease sometimes most abounds in seasons
remarkable for the negation of the alleged causes. Cool
years are healthy, cool years are sickly. Dry years are
salubrious, dry years are lethal.* Wet years present the
extremes of health and sickness, and years of a mixed
character have been in the plus and minus of the scale of
salubrity. Only one element seems to make any ap-
proach to a constant relation to the state of health, and
that is, a tendency to excess of vegetable life. In the
autumn of fertile years, there is often the greatest mor-
tality.

Can this arise from the decomposition of the vegetation
of that year, which has just been completed? Does the
vegetation submit, in the open air, to so rapid a change as
that which is to be admitted, to rationally entertain the
malarious theory, as usually received ? I think not, and
farther, the occurrence of severe malarious diseases in
barren places, on rocky heights, and sandy plains, shows
that we may more rationally attribute the diseases of

* "For atNewtown, Long Island, and in most parts of this island, these
diseases have existed in seasons of the greatest drought." (Hosack.)

124 FUNGI POISON — THE SOIL.

fertile seasons, rather to the spur given to the general
vegetation, which is also communicated to the crypto-
gamia, than to a decomposition, which remains without
proof, and which, when obviously most active, fails to ex-
cite disease.

As the fungi grow at the end of the phenogamous sea-
son, their production depends on causes which may or may
not have been felt by the common vegetation. Hence,
disease seems in this aspect, of inscrutable origination,
unless we look exclusively to the causes which may excite
vegetation throughout a season, or only in the spring and
summer, or only in the autumn.

There is a kind of corollary to the last proposition.
Places of malarious character often become, at least for a
time, quite salubrious, and places which have, for a long
course of time, been healthy, unexpectedly and without
apparent alterations, acquire morbid conditions. The
streams run at their mean height, the pools are filled to
their common capacity, the vegetation seems to follow its
wonted course; but the health varies according to unseen
influences, for all visible and measureable events move in
a customary round. These diversities of salubrity are
unexplained by the geology, the agriculture, the climate
and the meteorology, which, remaining the same, or mov-
ing in defined and customary cycles of obvious similitude,
leave no evidence of having any effect on the morbid irre-
gularities. It would seem as if the unknown cause were
migratory, or had long fits of irregular repose. Now, we
know of nothing which possesses an acknowledged power
of creating febrile diseases, by which such irregularity can
be explained, save by reference to the habits of the fungi.

The cryptogami have, in a high degree, the curious pro-
perty of destroying their own reproductive powers, or of poi-
soning against themselves the soil in which they grow. The

FAIRY RINGS. 125

lapis fung if er or volcanic tufa, if actively employed, loses,
in about three or four years, its power of production,
which is only reacquired by a repose of several seasons.
To this peculiarity is now ascribed the production of what
are, in Europe, called Fairy Rings. These curious de-
nuded circles, amidst the vivid green of an English com-
mon, were once attributed to the tiny feet of fairies, who
were supposed to make the spots, so marked, their place of
revelry. Subsequently they were thought to be the effect
of electrical action. Now they are known to be produced
by the eccentric growth of various kinds of fungi, and
might, therefore, be properly termed the vegetable ring-
worms of the fields; or rather the ring-plants of the com-
mons. Commencing, as do the ringworms, at a spot, these
fungi move progressively outwards, leaving a bare unve-
getating space behind them, upon which neither fungi nor
grass will grow for a time. Finally, the grass returns,
and filling up the centre, follows the protophytes, so as to
produce a broad circular belt of scorched earth, which
grows more and more in diameter. The fungi, evolved
only on the outer edge of the belt, do not again attack the
centre, in which the soil appears to have lost its power of
sustaining them.

Most persons attribute this fact to the probable exhaus-
tion from the soil of some special element necessary to the
growth of these fungi. That this view is erroneous, may
be inferred from the observed decay of the fungi on the
spot where they grow, by which the elements of their com-
position are restored to the soil at once.* Besides, if such
elements were removed and not thus restored, it is not easy

* The ploughing in of crops of clover is one of the best expedients for
the enrichment of the soil. Land is impoverished only by removing its
products.

11*

126 FAIRY RINGS.

to see, how that soil could ever regain them by repose.
But if we suppose the deposit of poisonous exuvise in the
soil, by these plants, we can understand how time, reac-
tions, and soaking rains, may remove them, and again
permit a reproduction, where, for a time, it is prevented.
A curious exemplification of the poisoning of the soil
against their own growth is afforded by the fungi which
have so lately preyed on the potato-crop. In Ireland the
potatoes grow much better in the subsequent year, when
the diseased potatoes ,have been left to rot in the soil, than
when they are carefully removed.

We have other analogies for this idea. Macaire, who
has given much scientific attention to the effect of plants
upon soils, observes, that certain vegetables enrich the
earth by their exuviae, as, for example, the leguminous
vegetables excrete much mucilage, and thus fertilize it for
the graminese, but that the papaveraceae injure the soil by
the deposit of opiate-like substances, and thus prevent or
render growths imperfect. So is it with the peach and
bitter-almond trees, which, as well as other plants, that
produce prussic acid and the poisonous hydrocyanates,
render the soil in which they grow incapable of succes-
sive crops of the same kind of trees. A nursery in which
young peach trees have been planted, and from which they
have been soon removed, will not sustain the same kind of
stock for eight or ten years afterwards.* Nature thus se-
cures a variety, by a succession of dissimilar vegetations.
I might multiply examples; but these are enough for our
present purpose. In this way are the fairy rings formed,
and in this way are the grasses protected from the end-

* Manuring the soil from which a peach tree has been removed, does
not mend the matter j removal of the soil, or long repose, will alone suffice.

NON-RECURRENCE OF DISEASES. 127

less destructive ravages of their enemies, as is the human
body from the recurrence of violent diseases.

This view may explain the gradual extinction, or unex-
pected reappearance of trees, shrubs and flowers. The
Prim, a New England hedge-bush, began to fail, according
to Webster, in 1775, and finally perished. In 1664, com-
menced the mildew in wheat, in New England, which long
rendered it impossible to cultivate that grain on the Atlantic
coast of three Eastern States. So have the Morillo cherry
tree, the Buttonwood tree, the Linden, and some others,
begun to decay, some in one way, some in another. The
peach tree is unhappily dying off in New Jersey, so that,
perhaps, in a few years, we may have to look exclusively
to the South for that delicious fruit.

Of all the known vegetable productions, the fungi ap-
pear to have the greatest variety of abating and destroy-
ing conditions. They poison their own soil, they depend
for luxuriancy on nice contingencies, they are the food of
many insects, who eat them up spores and stems, whilst
they prey voraciously on one another, fungus being super-
imposed on fungus, in an almost indefinite series.

Thus, then, may we not improbably account for the
occasional disappearance and reproduction of malarious
diseases in malarious situations.

The obstruction to their own reproduction on the part
of fungous vegetables may be, I speak it with great hesita-
tion, the cause of the non-recurrence of certain violent
diseases, such as yellow fever; while it may analogically
explain the non-recurrence of diseases produced by con-
tagious germs, such as small-pox, measles, &c.

May I be pardoned here for a short digression? Liebig
has attempted to elucidate this difficult point by a chemi-
cal explanation. He avers that each contagious disease

128 NON-RECURRENCE OF DISEASES.

is produced by the action of a species of ferment peculiar
to it, upon as peculiar a matter contained in the solids or
the fluids of the body; by which means said matter is
consumed, and thus, is a reproduction of the disease pre-
vented by the want of the material upon which the morbid
action may be founded. This famous theory of the cause
of the production and non-recurrence of certain conta-
gious diseases, has great plausibility and a charming sim-
plicity. It is, also, supported by analogies deduced from
the fermentation of gluten, in the production of bread,
and that of saccharine matter in the generation of alco-
hol. The fermentable substances having been consumed,
the process ceases, and, without the super-addition of new
materials, cannot be renewed.

The objections to the theory of Liebig are both numer-
ous and, I think, unanswerable. The existence of the
fermentable matters, as well as of the ferment, is purely
hypothetical, no proof being offered of the detection
of either. It must, also, be observed, that there is,
on this hypothesis, a peculiar substance to be acted
on, for each of many diseases. Thus there must be one
for variola, one for rubeola, one for ^varicella, one for
scarlatina, one for pertussis, one for yellow fever, and one
for every other non-recurrent disorder. Each of these
substances must reside in the system without necessity,
and apparently without cause. No influence seems to be
exerted by them on the health or structure before disease
comes, and their elimination leaves the system unaffected
subsequently. But there is presented to my mind a still
more important objection, wrhich may be thus stated.
For example, every one knows that persons who take
small-pox in the natural way, have, usually, severe attacks,
a multitude of pustules, and, according to the theory, a
very extensive fermentation, and a reproduction of a large

NON-RECURRENCE OF DISEASES. 129

quantity of the products of the fermentation. Of course,
there has been consumed a great mass of the peculiar fer-
mentable substance, on the pre-existence of which, the
susceptibility to small-pox was founded. In inoculated
cases, as a general rule, the disease is milder, the pustules
are much less numerous, and the peculiar matter is con-
sumed in much smaller quantity, while the products are
consequently less. A vaccination produces, usually, only
one small vesicle. Its fermenting power consumes, there-
fore, but a minute amount of matter, and produces but
little virus. Yet, commonly, by each of these processes,
the peculiar fermentable material is totally consumed, and
the person is commonly protected from a subsequent at-
tack of small-pox.

This objection to the theory of a ferment, seems un-
answerable. But it may be strengthened by adverting to
the fact, that by making many insertions of vaccine virus
in different parts of the body, we may act on a great deal
of the fermentable matter, or, by making but one or a
few, we may consume but little. Yet, in either case, no
one pretends to say that the degree of protection, or the
liability to a re-vaccination is altered. These objections,
while they unsettle the hypothetical basis of Liebig's ex-
planation, totally destroy its theoretical conclusions. A
peculiar matter is assumed as existing, is supposed to be
consumed, and not to be usually reproducible. This mat-
ter, however, may be equally well consumed by a small or
great fermentation, its own quantity seeming to have no
relation to the extent or activity of the process, which is
governed solely by the mode of using the ferment. How
will the analogy, upon which the whole theory rests, sus-
tain the argument of the great chemist? There is a cer-
tain quantity of gluten to be consumed in pannification,

130 NON-RECURRENCE OF DISEASES.

the action upon it of a ferment, by which the whole is
changed, must be ever the same in amount, although it
may not require exactly the same time. If 'the process
be less active, it must be proportionally prolonged; if it
be more energetic, it will be completed in a shorter time.
But the more violent action of a variola is not sooner at
an end than the gentler process of a vaccinia, both re-
quiring for their completeness about the same period of
time.

Taking it now for granted, that the chemical theory
will not satisfy the physiologist or pathologist, I will pro-
ceed to make an argument for the non-recurrence, as pro-
ducible by the leaving in the system the exuviae of germs.
A reference to former parts of these lectures show, that
many plants, and especially protophytes, poison, against
themselves, the soil in which they grow; and that thus we
may, not unsatisfactorily, explain the apparent capricious-
ness, as to health, of both places and seasons. Supposing
that the cell-germs, animal as well as vegetable, possess a
like power when they grow in the animal frame, we can
plausibly account for several things not otherwise explica-
ble at all. Thus we may presume that some of these
exuviee having no emunctory capable of their elimina-
tion, remain always where the diseased processes left them ;
and thus stand as an obstacle to the future action of simi-
lar germs.* We can thus, and thus only, say why certain
contagious diseases cannot recur, and why certain diseases
which are not contagious, as yellow fever, for example,
possess a like disability. Their germs having once re-
acted in the body leave behind a poison, or, at least, an

* Syphilitic poison lurks unexpressed in the system for years, or through
life, exemplifying itself only in the offspring. So gout leaps over a genera-
tion, in which, however, its cause must be ever present, though latent.

FIRST CASES OF EPIDEMICS. 131

impediment, by which their future reaction is there pre-
vented.

But certain contagious, and even non-contagious diseases,
obviously dependent on germs, have the power of recur-
rence for many times. Yet even these are subject, at
least temporarily, to the same law; for, otherwise, none of
these diseases could have a termination. The impedi-
mental matter being either emulged or decomposed, after a
period, shorter or longer, according to each disease, leaves
the system open to a reinfection ; and thus syphilis, favus,
and aphthee may, for many successive times, disturb the
health of the same individual.

Returning to the immediate object of the present lec-
ture, I proceed to explain why it is that the first cases of
an epidemic are usually so much more fatal than those
which follow them. This is especially true of the diseases
of a miasmatic character and non-contagious maladies,
such as yellow fever and cholera. Toxication, when of
vegetable origin, is made less potent by habit. Thus, in
process of time the habitual drinker or opium eater, tole-
rates enormous doses of alcohol or opium. Nay, even when
made as obviously drunk even to insensibility, the old
toper is in less immediate danger than the beginner. His
organism recovers better, and while the novice dies poi-
soned or apoplectic, the snoring habitual drunkard reco-
vers from his coma and cerebral congestion. Thus is it
with those who are toxicated by an atmospherically con-
veyed fungous poison. At first it proves eminently fatal;
subsequently, although its symptomatic expression may
be as strong, its danger steadily decreases, until at length
almost every case recovers.

For this reason, medical men, at the commencement of
a violent epidemic, are driven too often from a treatment

132 FUNGI OF SANDY PLAINS.

founded on proper principles, into a loose and dangerous
empiricism. For the same reason, are they disposed, at a
later period of the attack, to rely upon means of cure ob-
viously inert, or improper, because, the lessened mortality
smiles an approval. Let any one found his treatment
from the first, upon a proper knowledge of the pathology,
and a decent regard to prominent symptoms, and he will
succeed in the end, not only much better, but also much
more satisfactorily to himself, than those who lower them-
selves to the level of mere empirics. The deaths are at
first owing, not to the greater potency of the cause, but
to the keener susceptibility of the recipient of disease.
While it increases the severity of the cases, this suscepti-
bility is not greater for our remedies, and therefore we
must necessarily have, at the outset, less success.

The malarious diseases commonly found in the rich
alluvial courses of rivers, or shores of lakes, sometimes
abound on sandy plains. Several writers describe the
sickly plains of Brabant as superficially dry and almost
bare of vegetation, and Dr. Ferguson informs us of the
desolate aspect of Rosen thai and Oosterhout, in South
Holland, where a level sandy plain bore nothing save
some stunted heath-plants. Beneath the surface, was
found at no great depth clear potable water. The plain
on the side of the river opposite to Lisbon, dreaded for its
pestilential character, is also dry and sandy. Here no
-ordinary vegetation, no decomposition, can explain to us
the cause of this malign power. But there is a teeming
vegetation beneath, and almost at, the surface of such
places, to which alone can we attribute their diseases.
Truffles, a species of mushrooms, grow prodigiously in
such places. They delight in sandy plains, and their
microscopic congeners are also there in abundance. Such

RECAPITULATION. 133

plains, in our own southern country, emit a fungous or
mouldy odor,* soon after night; which fact has not a little
puzzled curious observers.

May not the healthful power of the plough be mainly
attributed to its destruction of fungous growths of this, and
of other kinds. Almost every writer on malaria, speaks
of the beneficial influence upon health, of a constant culti-
vation. Now, we know, that when a country is covered
with woods, it is usually salubrious, and that when cleared,
and put under imperfect tillage, it becomes more sickly;
but that a regular system of husbandry by the plough,
restores to it all its former healthfulness ; while the placing
it for some time in pasturage, causes it to again retrograde
to a certain degree. The plough is the especial enemy of
the fungi, which, either beneath the surface, as truffles, or
upon it, as mushrooms, are obviously lessened or extirpated
by the constant disturbance of an active tillage. Nothing
else known to be capable of affecting the health of the in-
habitants, is materially altered by agricultural processes.

I have now, gentlemen, brought to a close the pro-
longed examination of the cause of miasmatic fevers, and
non-contagious epidemics. Let me recapitulate, in a very
cursory way, the most important elements of our argu-
ment.

I began, by showing that all the usually received opin-
ions on this subject, are liable t@ insuperable objections,
except that which refers to the causation by organic life,
and especially by animalcules, as held by Coluniella,
Kircher, Linnaeus, Mojon, and Henry Holland.

* This is, probably, the cause of the musky odor noticed by Humboldt,
when the soil of sonae tropical regions is disturbed.

12

184 HECAPIT U LATION.

While I was impressed, for the reasons so ably stated
by Holland, with the greater probability of the organic
theory, I prefer, for reasons stated by myself, the fun-
gous, to the animalcular hypothesis.

My preference is founded on the vast number, extra-
ordinary variety, minuteness, diffusion and climatic pecu-
liarities of the fungi.

The spores of these plants are not only numerous,
minute, and indefinitely diffused, but they are so like to
animal cells, as to have the power of penetrating into, and
germinating upon, the most interior tissues of the human
body.

Introduced into the body through the stomach, or by
tha skin or lungs, eryptogamous poisons were shown to
produee diseases of a febrile character, intermittent, re-
mittent and continued; which were most successfully
treated by wine and bark.

Many cutaneous diseases, such as favm and mentagra,
are proved to be dependent upon cryptogamous vegeta-
tions; and even the disease of the mucous membrane,
termed aphthae, arises from the presence of minute fungi.

As microscopic investigations become more minute, we
discover protophytes in diseases, where,, until our own
time, their existence was not even suspected, as in the dis-
charges of some kinds of dysentery, and in the mrcina of
pyrosis. We are therefore entitled to believe that dis-
covery will ber on this subject, progressive^

The detection ©f the origin of the nrascardine of the
silk worm7 and a great many analogous diseases of in-
sects, fishes and reptiles, and the demonstration of the
cryptogamism of these maladies, their contagious character
in one species of animate, their transfer to many other
species, nay even to vegetables themselves, all concur to

RECAPITULATION.

render less improbable, the agency of fungi in the causa-
tion of diseases of a febrile character.

A curious citation was subsequently made, of the f ungi-
ferous condition during epidemics and epizootics. These
moulds, red, white, yellow, gray, or even black, stained
garments, utensils and pavements, made the fogs fetid,
and caused disagreeable odors and spots, even in the re-
cesses of closets and the interior of trunks and desks.

These moulds existed, even when the hygrometric state
did not give to the air any unusual moisture for their sus-
tentation and propagation. Their germs seemed to have,
as have epidemics, an inherent power of extension.

The singular prevalence of malarious diseases in the
autumn, is best explained by supposing them to be pro-
duced by the fungi, which grow most commonly at the
same season. The season of greatest photophytic activity,
is, in every country, the period of the greatest malarious
disturbance. The sickly season is, in the rains in Africa,
in the very dry season in Majorca and Sardinia, in the
rainy, season of the insular West Indies, and in the dry
season of Demerara and Surinam, Even when the vege-
tation is peculiarly controlled, as in Egypt by the Nile,
and the cryptogami are thus thrown into the season of
winter and spring, that season becomes, contrary to rule,
the pestilential part of the year.

Marshes are a safe residence by day, whilst they are
often highly dangerous by night. In the most deadly
localities of our southern country, and of Africa, the
sportsman may tread the mazes of a swamp safely by day,
although at every step, he extricates vast quantities of the
gases, which lie entangled in mud and vegetable mould.
This point, so readily explained by reference to the ac-
knowledged nocturnal growth and power of the fungi, is
a complete stumbling-block to the miasmatists.

1 36 RECAPITULATION.

The cryptogamous theory well explains the obstruction
to the progress of malaria offered by a road, a wall, a
screen of trees, a veil or a gauze curtain.

It also accounts for the nice localization of an ague, or
yellow fever, or cholera, and the want of power in steady
winds to convey malarious diseases into the heart of a
city, from the adjacent country.

It explains also well, the security afforded by artificially
drying the air of malarious places, the exemption of cooks
and smiths from the sweating sickness, the cause of the
danger from mouldy sheets, and of the sternutation from
old books and papers.

On no other theory can we so well account, if account
at all, for the phenomena of milzbrand and milk-sickness,
the introduction of yellow fever into northern ports, and
the wonderful irregularities of the progress of cholera.

The cryptogamous theory will well explain the pecu-
liar domestication of different diseases in different re-
gions, which have a similar climate; the plague of Egypt,
the yellow fever of the Antilles, and the cholera of India.
It accounts, too, for their occasional expansion into unac-
customed places, and their retreat back to their original
haunts.

Our hypothesis will also enable us to tell, why malarious
sickness is disproportionate to the character of the seasons ;
why it infests some tropical countries and spares others ;
why the dry Maremma abounds with fevers, while the wet
shores of Brazil and Australia actually luxuriate in health-
fulness. The prolonged incubative period, the frequent
relapses of intermittents, and the latency of the malari-
ous poisons for months, can only be well explained by
adopting the theory of a fungous causation.

Finally, it explains the cause of the non-recurrence of

RECAPITULATION. 137

very potent maladies, better than the chemical theory of
Liebig ; and shows why the earliest cases of an epidemic
are commonly the most fatal.

When I entered upon the task of elucidating for you
this very difficult subject, gentlemen, I did not dream of
its extent and importance, nor did I suppose that it would
have imposed upon me so much research, or inflicted upon
you so many lectures.

I have, therefore, not attempted to account by this the-
ory, for the periodicity of malarious diseases, rather for
want of time than want of power, and from a desire not
to tax too severely your patience.

The task is now completed. Yet, after all my labor
and your polite attention, the theory presented to you, may
not be finally demonstrated. But it is the most consistent
with the phenomena known at present, and is much better
sustained by established facts than any other hypothesis
yet presented to the world. It has, therefore, the requisites
of a philosophical theory, which, in other and more exact
sciences, would be accepted, not to be held as absolutely
true, but as, in the present state of our knowledge, the
most plausible and convenient explanation of the pheno-
mena.

It has another value. It will revive the inquiry into
the causes of fever, by giving to it a new direction, by
oflering new points of view, new motives for study and
new lights from analogy. If, too, its confirmation or re-
futation should give to future inquirers after truth, half
the pleasure which I have derived from excursions into
this new field of mingled reason and fancy, these Lectures
will not have been vainly elaborated.

-.

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