Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/64

 That spores, parasites, and animalculæ are a frequent and often unsuspected cause of diseases of the body, and oftener the cause of mental disturbance, may be judged of from the following taken from the " Boston Journal of Chemistry:" — "—Dr. Bottini (of Navarre) has injected the bladder in cases of cystitis with a solution of carbolic acid, — one part to one hundred of water, — and has obtained most unhoped-for success. The putrefaction of the urine, due to its stagnation in thebladder, is combated, stopped, or prevented; and the myriads of zoophytes and of pencillium glaucum, very abundant before its use, are no longer to be found in the pus or urine."—Giorn delta Venetie.

"— Dr. Lemaire, of Paris, has been examining the coating of perspiration and dust formed upon the bodies of people who have passed ten or fifteen clays without a bath, and finds in it millions of living parasites."

"The Chicago Microscopical Club examined specimens of trichinae from the biceps muscle of a young lady who recently died near that city. The specimens examined showed three hundred thousand parasites to the cubic inch."

"— M. Poulet, in a note to the Academie des Sciences (Gazette Ilebdomadaire), writes as follows: A small epidemic of whooping-cough having occurred in the locality where I live, I was induced to examine the vapor expired by several children affected with this malady, reputed contagious by the majority of observers. These vapors arising from the respiration of the little patients, presented a veritable world of infusoria, identical in all cases. The more numerous, which were also the most slender, may be classed with the species described by some under the name of Monas termo; by others, under that of Bacterium termo. Others in less number moved to and fro in the field of the instrument. They had a form resembling a bacillus, slightly spindle-shaped; their length was two to three hundreths of a millimetre; their breadth, about a fifth as much. This is the species which Muller named Monas punctum; Ehrenberg, Budo punctum; and which micrographers habitually class among the Bacteries — Bacterium bacillus. Thus, whooping-cough, because of these alterations in the expired air, belongs to the class of infectious maladies, of