On the animal alkaloids : the ptomaïnes, leucomaïnes, and extractives in their pathological relations / by Sir William Aitken.
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the animal alkaloids : the ptomaïnes, leucomaïnes, and extractives in their pathological relations / by Sir William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![to dryness, and the residue digested in cold and in boiling alcohol, then redissolved, and again filtered, cannot owe its toxic property to living organisms of any kind.*'* But more recent bacteriological methods, combined with micro-chemical investigations, have furnished evi- dence that various products of a poisonous nature are produced as the result of the growth of bacteria. From this pomt of view it may still be possible to reconcile the present conflicting theories as to the influence and relations of micro-organisms to disease. But the fallacies which beset bacterial methods of investiga- tions are such that trustworthy conclusions are difficult to be arrived at. The influences of life, of putrefactive processes after life has ceased, of the results of growing germs in hving tissue, and in sterilised media, have all been used in drawing conclusions and in comparing results which are not comparable. To apply and compare conclusions derived fi-om beef-tea, gelatine, and other dead organic infusions in the chemist's flask or test-tube, to the phenomena in living beings, is an obvious fallacy. The things have nothing in common, the factors are not the same, and the phenomena of decomposition or chemical change can never explain the ]Dhenomena of disease. This is one great fallacy which runs through much of the pathology which pertains to micro- organisms in relation to disease. It is only when the concurrent exercise of the functions which maintain life, ceases, that a chemical change at once begins; and until that change sets in (either locally or generally) * Aitken, Science and Practice of Medicine, 7th edit., p. 376' 1880.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21953181_0089.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
