UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1882 [PAGE 122]

Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1882
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116 fever and ague, not understood to be infectious or contagious, are also believed to be due to certain kinds of the same things. Herein lies the greatest interest and highest importance attributed to these wonderful but excessively minute denizens of the, to common eyes, invisible world; and herein, more than anywhere else, rests the hope of attaining a scientific basis for medical practice, as well as a rational adoption of preventive measures against the ravages of disease. It will not do for the hobbyist to assume that all the ills that flesh is heir to can be traced to the corrupting work of "disease germs," for, as has been before pointed out, these minute things have no life functions which strictly separate them from other plants and animals. Their physiology is our physiology; they assimilate food material as we do, and, by virtue of this power, live as we live. The delicate and complicated machinery of the higher animal bodies may be put out of order in many ways, and by want of nature's harmony the normal, vital forces themselves may be the agents of disease. But while there is no toleration for the hobbyist, those who have not investigated and cannot investigate for themselves should not hesitate to accept the testimony of capable specialists, when the latter find reason to assert that such and such a disease is due to the microscopic mischief-makers Their bacteria minuteness no longer prevents the demonstration of their presence, the tracing of their development, the detection of the actual effects and the experimental testing of results. There is now in certain cases just as good evidence |that bacteria cause disease as there is that hawks destroy chickens, and the evidence is as inductively rigid in the one case as in the other. Even without microscopic examination, there is good reason to assert that the contagious principle, whatever it is, grows. Any chemical poison decreases in virulence by diffusion in a mass of inert matter, and soon loses its effectiveness; but it is the special characteristic of the poisons of which we write that a minute quantity soon infects the whole system of a large animal, and then the smallest drop of fluids from its body is sufficient to give origin to the disease in another animal and so on perpetually. Increase has taken place; there must have been growth; only living things grow; the microscope aids us to see what this living thing is; why should we doubt! It is true that Dr. Lionel Beale proposed a theory of disease germs, which accounts for increase by assuming that degraded, yet not dead, parts of the animal body itself constitute the true contagion, and that every such living but degraded portion has the power in some way of over mastering the healthy—a speculation which, though brilliantly conceived and sustained at the time, has not been definitely supported by later investigations, nor held with assurance by any other authority, known to the writer; though, from what has just been said, the process is neither inconceivable nor a priori impossible, perhaps ;not even improbable. The only question is, "Do facts prove it?" There are indeed some experimental facts which seem to favor the idea, viz: the transmissibility of inflammation produced by chemical or physical means upon inoculations with the exuding serum. It may be said however that even in this there is the possibility of independent organisms being the real virus.