Malignant cholera : its mode of propagation, and its prevention / By William Budd.
- William Budd
- Date:
- 1849
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Malignant cholera : its mode of propagation, and its prevention / By William Budd. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![growth. The green leaf, under the influence of light, de- composes the carbonic acid in the atmosphere, so as to fix the carbon in its own tissues, with a force far exceeding that of our most powei-ful voltaic batteries. The various tribes of fungi exert, in the dark, perhaps quite as great a force in withdrawing the materials for their growth and propagation from the organic substances on which they feed. The rapidit}-, indeed, with which they grow and multiply is the measure of the force which they thus exert. The truth affirmed in the fourth proposition—that the human intestine, namely, is the sole breeding-place of the poison, must be looked upon as the crowning truth of all, on account of the momentous practical consequences to which it dii'ectly leads. Fortunately,] the evidence on which it rests consists almost entirely in matters of fact, which may be brought home to the sense, and of which every one may judge for himself. In the first place, it is evident enough that the cholera fungus—as I will provisionally call it—does breed in the human intestine, and that with a fertility exceeding all calculation. This is a matter of plain observation. It is impossible, in fact, that the countless myriads of these fungi which are found in the rice water, could have entered the intes- tine as such. No other medium external to the human body contains them in sufficient numbers to account for their enormous abundance here. Nor can this abundance be explained in any other way than through the infinite multiplication of the few germs which, once swallowed, have here found the conditions necessary for their growth and propagation. To this may be added the very important consideration, that these beings are found in the rice water of a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21363948_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
