The Germ Theory Applied to the Explanation of the Phenomena of Diseases: The Specific Fevers

Excerpt from The Germ Theory Applied to the Explanation of the Phenomena of Diseases: The Specific Fevers

A sound pathology is the basis of all rational medicine: a correct knowledge of the mode of production of diseased processes, the surest means of finding out how these processes may be prevented and checked.

Bearing as The Germ Theory of Disease does, on the pathology of the most important ailments to which man is liable, the establishment, or the refutation of this theory, is a matter of importance not only to medical science, but to mankind.

Hitherto, the question has been treated chiefly as a biological one. More attention has been paid to the mode of origin, than to the mode of action, of the germs which were supposed to exist.

One object which I have in view is to rescue The Germ Theory of Disease from what I consider a false and misleading position, and to give to it its true and legitimate standing as a pathological question.

The subject discussed in the following pages, is not whether germs may originate de novo; but whether the propagation of germs in the system, is competent to produce the phenomena of disease. The former question is part of the general doctrine of Heterogenesis: the latter constitutes the special question of The Germ Theory of Disease.

The diseases to the explanation of whose causation this theory is applicable, are so numerous and so varied, that their separate consideration would have prolonged my labours indefinitely.

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