Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Microbes, ferments and moulds. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.
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![constitutes contagion, could only be defined by having recourse to the term catalytic action/' which merely placed the solution of the problem another step back, and substituted one unknown thing for another.* The parasitic theory will have done much for science if it only delivers us from miasmata, effluvia, and, above all, catalytic action. As soon as it had been shown that miasmata and effluvia, as well as virus, were only air-germs—that is, microbes and their spores—a brilliant light was thrown on all pathology, of which the benefits may be measured by the great work accom- plished in this direction within the last ten years. This theory has given us Guerin's protective treat- ment of wounds, Lister's antiseptic dressing, and Pasteur's new vaccine, and these three great dis- coveries are enough to render the hypothesis immortal, even admitting that it is only an hypothesis. The adverse theories, when opposed to the microbian theory, can show us no progress effected in science, and this suffices to condemn them. Moreover, the microbian theory is no longer in the primitive stage in which it can be regarded as a pure hypothesis, since it has entered the domain of positive facts. Before an infectious disease can be considered due to the presence of a specific microbe, * See, for example, the article Miasmes in Nysten's Dictionary (LittriJ and Jtuliin, edit. 1864): Miasma is constituted by the organic substances of the air, in different stages of catalytic modification. These words are printed in italics by Robin himself. See also the words J''j]luvcs, Cakdytiques, Virus, etc., in the same dictionary.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20995258_0319.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
