The development of the doctrine of contagium vivum 1500-1750 : a preliminary sketch / by Charles Singer.
- Charles Singer
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The development of the doctrine of contagium vivum 1500-1750 : a preliminary sketch / by Charles Singer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![are tlie cause of plitliisis, piierpera] fever, STveatin sickness, measles, small-pox, and cancer, to say nothing of headache, hevifchment, convulsions, and all the evils that Pandora’s hox contained. “And are not worms.’ he asks, “the instruments of God’s just anger? Was not the maHna that the Israelites ate in the desert, also verminous? Did not the. gourd of •Tonah become a victim of worms, as was also the wretched hodj^ of the wicked Antiochus? Even the g-reat King of Israel was pursued by the same fate, for it is said : ‘ Behold, I am a worm and no man.’ ” Views such as those of Paullini form, of course, but a caricature of the position of his more sober and scientific contemporaries: they are quoted as affording a good example of the kind of expression which threw discredit on the whole microbic theory of disease, and led to a retrograde movement, which extended from about the year 1725 until well into the nineteenth centur}’. A more judicious supporter of the theory was Theodore Kerckring, who published his “ Spicilegium Anatomicum” at Amsterdam in 1G70. Kerckring had conge in contact with the philosopher and speotacle-maker, Spinoza, who, he says had given him a splendid micro- scope. “ Doctors,” he considered, “ should use every possihle aid to diagnosis, and an excellent one is the microscope, which is now made hetter than ever before. With its aid,” he says, “it is easy to see the intestine as well as the liver and other solid organs swarming with innumerable minute animalcula. One hardly knows whether these corrupt the body by their incessant motion or whether they preserve it.” Here is an advance in pathology in a direction similar to that made by Malpighi and Leeuwenhoeck, whose epoch- making- work was appearing- at about this time. Immense, however, as was the influence of these two latter writers in displacing- the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and drawing attention to the minute structure of the organs and demonstrating the multiplicity of micro- scopic life, they hardly directly touched the theorv with which we are at the moment cmicemed. The advent of views so novel and so imperfectly demonstrated as Kircher’s was bound to draw ample criticism. As we have already pointed out, this in large measure took the form of regarding- the minute organisms as the result rather than the cause of disease, ^fany others, as, for example, Kathaniel Hodges, who wrote an excellent work on the plagiie of London, engaged in a naive search for macroscopic insects in the excreta and discharges of the sick, a search which had naturally negative resTilts (r/). Among the unscientific adher- ents of the theory we may also mention the novelist, Daniel Defoe (h). The progress of scientific knowledge has been compared to the erection of a great build- ing in which no part of the general structure can go far without due attention being given to the other parts. Although the doctrine of spontaneous generation is compatible with a belief in living contagion, this latter belief conld not be largely developed until a more sound idea had been attained of the origin of living^things. For the establishment of this truer view it was first necessary to demolish existing errors, a.nd so we find the main part of this work done by men of sceptical and destructi''’e rather than experimental and constructive minds. Thus, it comes about that no chapter in the history of science exhibits more happily the need of the scholar in the scientific economy. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century—the most learned portion of what was essentially fhe learned century—appeared a number of writers who combined to an unusual degree a knowledge of the past with an interest in the progress of material science. The combination of the two sources yield a special type of scientific doubt associated with a rare power of expression. Such writers were really exceedingly numerous at the period, but we will mention only two typical examples, who strangely resembled each other in many ways, the Italian, Francesco Bedi. and OTir own Sir Thomas Browne. Both w-ere poets and stylists fthough one used verse and the other prose as his mediumV both were scholars, both observers, and both realized fully the meaning of their own simple experiments, although this side of Browne’s work has been iinfairly neglected. Both were loyal sons of the Church intp which they were horn. In both a peculiar intellectual conservati.sni and aloofness was combined with mental qrialities which should give them a place in the history of science. We must not further pursue the analogy. Bedi, to whom is attribiited the honour of having slain the doctrine of spontaneous generation, was really only one member, albeit doubtless the most valuable of a considerable school. Since, however, tradition has bound up the name of Bedi (rt) NATHANIEL HODGES, Loimologia ; or an Historical Account of the plague in London in 166,5 by J. Quinoey, M.D. London, 1720. (6) DANIEL DEFOE (H. F.). I.Jonrnal of the Plague Year Londo.n, 1720.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22463392_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
