Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/30

 with the formation of metastatic abscesses, and, as a rule, terminating fatally and very rapidly by the formation of infective abscesses and nodules associated with inflammation, not only of the peritoneum, but of other serous cavities."

It is no small matter to have learnt from Dr. Sanderson's inquiries into the pathology of diphtheria, that microzymes and micrococci exist which possess the power of colonising in living tissues, and "thereby inducing a variety of inflam- mation which is distinguished from others by its tendency to result in disintegration, and that this faculty of disintegrative inflammation is possessed by them independently, and can be exercised without the concurrence of any previously existing morbid process." The micrococci found by Sanderson, by Keber, Cohn, and others in small- pox, the rod-like bodies, distinct from bacteria, be- longing to splenic fever, the wavy spirilla discovered by Obermeier in the blood of persons suffering from relapsing fever, and not seen in other acute and infective diseases-all point to the necessity of remodelling many of our views regarding the essence of disease; while a more intimate know. ledge of its pathology cannot fail to give greater precision to our methods of combating morbid processes.

We cannot hope to apply a more scientific treatment to discase than we do now, until we