with this theory. Upon this subject the President called attention to
the view of Sir Joseph Fayrer, who acknowledged the importance of the
discovery if it should be confirmed, but considered that there was a
possibility that the results attributed to these influences might, to
some extent, be due to disturbance of the system in a body predisposed
to be deranged by peculiarity of constitution, climatic or other
influence of the nature of which we are ignorant, though it is
conceivable by analogy.

The marvelous facility of reproduction of various germs, as shown
by Pasteur in the case of chicken cholera, was dwelt upon; and the
President said that it would be a wonder how any higher form of life
could exist subject to the possibility of invasion by such countless
hosts of occult enemies were it not seen that the science of the
prevention of disease advanced quite as rapidly as our knowledge of the
causes. Holding that the attitude of the sanitarian, in regard to the
germ theory of diseases, as applied to all diseases of the zymotic
class, must be one of reserve, yet, he said, even if the views of those
who are prepared to accept the germ theory of disease to its fullest
extent were shown to be true, it seems to be certain that if the
invasion of these occult enemies present in the air is undertaken in
insufficient force, or upon an animal in sufficiently robust health,
they are refused a foothold and expelled; or, if they have secured a
lodgment in the tissues, they, so to speak, may be laid hold of, and
absorbed or digested by them.

In corroboration of this view, Professor Koch and others state that the
minor organisms of tubercular disease do not occur in the tissues of
healthy bodies, and that when introduced into the living body their
propagation and increase is greatly favored by a low state of the