Chapter LXXV: Part 75

"In 1798, Mr. Humphry Davy, an apprentice to Mr. Borlase a
surgeon at Bodmin, had so distinguished himself by zeal and
power in the study of chemistry and natural philosophy, that
he was invited by Dr. Beddoes of Bristol, to become the
'superintendent of the Pneumatic Institution which had been
established at Clifton for the purpose of trying the medicinal
effects of different gases.' He obtained release from his
apprenticeship, accepted the appointment, and devoted himself
to the study of gases, not only in their medicinal effects,
but much more in all their chemical and physical relations.
After two years' work he published his 'Researches, Chemical
and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide.' … He
wrote, near the end of his essay: 'As nitrous oxide in its
extensive operation appears capable of destroying physical
pain, it may probably be used with advantage during surgical
operations in which no great effusion of blood takes place.'
It seems strange that no one caught at a suggestion such as
this. … The nitrous oxide might have been of as little
general interest as the carbonic or any other, had it not been
for the strange and various excitements produced by its
inhalation. These made it a favourite subject with chemical
lecturers, and year after year, in nearly every chemical
theatre, it was fun to inhale it after the lecture on the
gaseous compounds of nitrogen; and among those who inhaled it
there must have been many who, in their intoxication, received
sharp and heavy blows, but, at the time, felt no pain. And
this went on for more than forty years, exciting nothing
worthy to be called thought or observation, till, in December
1844, Mr. Colton, a popular itinerant lecturer on chemistry,
delivered a lecture on 'laughing gas' in Hartford,
Connecticut. Among his auditors was Mr. Horace Wells, an
enterprising dentist in that town, a man of some power in
mechanical invention. After the lecture came the usual
amusement of inhaling the gas, and Wells, in whom long wishing
had bred a kind of belief that something might be found to
make tooth-drawing painless, observed that one of the men
excited by the gas was not conscious of hurting himself when
he fell on the benches and bruised and cut his knees. Even
when he became calm and clear-headed the man was sure that he
did not feel pain at the time of his fall. Wells was at once
convinced—more easily convinced than a man of more scientific
mind would have been—that, during similar insensibility, in a
state of intense nervous excitement, teeth might be drawn
without pain, and he determined that himself and one of his
own largest teeth should be the first for trial. Next morning
Colton gave him the gas, and his friend Dr. Riggs extracted
his tooth. He remained unconscious for a few moments, and then
exclaimed, 'A new era in tooth-pulling! It did not hurt me
more than the prick of a pin. It is the greatest discovery
ever made.' In the next three weeks Wells extracted teeth from
some twelve or fifteen persons under the influence of the
nitrous oxide, and gave pain to only two or three. Dr. Riggs,
also, used it with the same success, and the practice was well
known and talked of in Hartford. Encouraged by his success
Wells went to Boston, wishing to enlarge the reputation of his
discovery and to have an opportunity of giving the gas to some
one undergoing a surgical operation. Dr. J. C. Warren, the
senior Surgeon of the Massachusetts General Hospital, to whom
he applied for this purpose, asked him to show first its
effects on some one from whom he would draw a tooth. He
undertook to do this in the theatre of the medical college
before a large class of students, to whom he had, on a
previous day, explained his plan. Unluckily, the bag of gas
from which the patient was inhaling was taken a way too soon;
he cried out when his tooth was drawn; the students hissed and
hooted; and the discovery was denounced as an imposture. Wells
left Boston disappointed and disheartened; he fell ill, and
was for many months unable to practise his profession. Soon
afterwards he gave up dentistry, and neglected the use and
study of the nitrous oxide, till he was recalled to it by a
discovery even more important than his own. The thread of the
history of nitrous oxide may be broken here.
{2144}
The inhalation of sulphuric ether was often, even in the last
century, used for the relief of spasmodic asthma, phthisis,
and some other diseases of the chest. … As the sulphuric
ether would 'produce effects very similar to those occasioned
by nitrous oxide,' and was much the more easy to procure, it
came to be often inhaled, for amusement, by chemist's lads and
by pupils in the dispensaries of surgeons. It was often thus
used by young people in many places in the United States. They
had what they called 'ether frolics.' … Among those who had
joined in these ether-frolics was Dr. Wilhite of Anderson,
South Carolina. In one of them, in 1839," a negro boy was
unconscious so long that he was supposed for some time to be
dead. "The fright at having, it was supposed, so nearly killed
the boy, put an end to the ether-frolics in that
neighbourhood; but in 1842, Wilhite had become a pupil of Dr.
Crauford Long, practising at that time at Jefferson (Jackson
County, Georgia). Here he and Dr. Long and three fellow-pupils
often amused themselves with the ether-inhalation, and Dr.
Long observed that when he became furiously excited, as he
often did, he was unconscious of the blows which he, by
chance, received as he rushed or tumbled about. He observed
the same in his pupils; and thinking over this, and emboldened
by what Mr. Wilhite told him of the negro-boy recovering after
an hour's insensibility, he determined to try whether the
ether-inhalation would make any one insensible of the pain of
an operation. So, in March, 1842, nearly three years before
Wells's observations with the nitrous oxide, he induced a Mr.
Venable, who had been very fond of inhaling ether, to inhale
it till he was quite insensible. Then he dissected a tumour
from his neck; no pain was felt, and no harm followed. Three
months later, he similarly removed another tumour from him;
and again, in 1842 and in 1845, he operated on other three
patients, and none felt pain. His operations were known and
talked of in his neighbourhood; but the neighbourhood was only
that of an obscure little town; and he did not publish any of
his observations. … He waited to test the ether more
thoroughly in some greater operation than those in which he
had yet tried it; and then he would have published his account
of it. While he was waiting, others began to stir more
actively in busier places, where his work was quite unknown,
not even heard of. Among those with whom, in his unlucky visit
to Boston, Wells talked of his use of the nitrous oxide, and
of the great discovery which he believed that he had made,
were Dr. Morton and Dr. Charles Jackson. … Morton was a
restless energetic dentist, a rough man, resolute to get
practice and make his fortune. Jackson was a quiet scientific
gentleman, unpractical and unselfish, in good repute as a
chemist, geologist, and mineralogist. At the time of Wells's
visit, Morton, who had been his pupil in 1842, and for a short
time, in 1843, his partner, was studying medicine and anatomy
at the Massachusetts Medical College, and was living in
Jackson's house. Neither Morton nor Jackson put much if any
faith in Wells's story, and Morton witnessed his failure in
the medical theatre. Still, Morton had it in his head that
tooth-drawing might somehow be made painless. … Jackson had
long known, as many others did, of sulphuric ether being
inhaled for amusement and of its producing effects like those
of nitrous oxide; he knew also of its employment as a remedy
for the irritation caused by inhaling chlorine. He had himself
used it for this purpose, and once, in 1842, while using it,
he became completely insensible. He had thus been led to think
that the pure ether might be used for the prevention of pain
in surgical operations; he spoke of it with some scientific
friends, and sometimes advised a trial of it; but he did not
urge it or take any active steps to promote even the trial.
One evening, Morton, who was now in practice as a dentist,
called on him, full of some scheme which he did not divulge,
and urgent for success in painless tooth-drawing. Jackson
advised him to use the ether, and taught him how to use it. On
that same evening, the 30th of September, 1846, Morton inhaled
the ether, put himself to sleep, and, when he awoke, found
that he had been asleep for eight minutes. Instantly, as he
tells, he looked for an opportunity of giving it to a patient;
and one just then coming in, a stout healthy man, he induced
him to inhale, made him quite insensible, and drew his tooth
without his having the least consciousness of what was done.
But the great step had yet to be made. … Could it be right
to incur the risk of insensibility long enough and deep enough
for a large surgical operation? It was generally believed that
in such insensibility there was serious danger to life. Was it
really so? Jackson advised Morton to ask Dr. J. C. Warren to
let him try, and Warren dared to let him. It is hard, now, to
think how bold the enterprise must have seemed to those who
were capable of thinking accurately on the facts then known.
The first trial was made on the 16th of October, 1846. Morton
gave the ether to a patient in the Massachusetts General
Hospital, and Dr. Warren removed a tumour from his neck. The
result was not complete success; the patient hardly felt the
pain of the cutting, but he was aware that the operation was
being performed. On the next day, in a severer operation by
Dr. Hayward, the success was perfect; the patient felt
nothing, and in long insensibility there was no appearance of
danger to life. The discovery might already be deemed
complete; for the trials of the next following days had the
same success, and thence onwards the use of the ether extended
over constantly widening fields. … It might almost be said
that in every place, at least in Europe, where the discovery
was promoted more quickly than in America, the month might be
named before which all operative surgery was agonising, and
after which it was painless."

_Sir J. Paget,
Escape from Pain
(Nineteenth Century, December 1879)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 19th Century.
The Study of Fermentation and its results.

"It was some time ago the current belief that epidemic
diseases generally were propagated by a kind of malaria, which
consisted of organic matter in a state of motor-decay; that
when such matter was taken into the body through the lungs,
skin, or stomach, it had the power of spreading there the
destroying process by which itself had been assailed. Such a
power was visibly exerted in the case of yeast. A little
leaven was seen to leaven the whole lump—a mere speck of
matter, in this supposed state of decomposition, being
apparently competent to propagate indefinitely its own decay.
Why should not a bit of rotten malaria act in a similar manner
within the human frame? In 1836 a very wonderful reply was
given to this question. In that year Cagniard de la Tour
discovered the yeast-plant—a living organism, which when
placed in a proper medium feeds, grows, and reproduces itself,
and in this way carries on the process which we name
fermentation. By this striking discovery fermentation was
connected with organic growth. Schwann, of Berlin, discovered
the yeast-plant independently about the same time."

_J. Tyndall,
Fragments of Science,
volume 1, chapter 5._

{2145}

The question of fermentation "had come to present an entirely
new aspect through the discovery of Cagniard de la Tour that
yeast is really a plant belonging to one of the lowest types
of fungi, which grows and reproduces itself in the fermentable
fluid, and whose vegetative action is presumably the cause of
that fermentation, just as the development of mould in a
jam-pot occasions a like change in the upper stratum of the
jam, on whose surface, and at whose expense, it lives and
reproduces itself. Chemists generally—especially Liebig, who
had a fermentation theory of his own—pooh-poohed this idea
altogether; maintaining the presence of the yeast-plant to be
a mere concomitant, and refusing to believe that it had any
real share in the process. But in 1843, Professor Helmholtz,
then a young undistinguished man, devised a method of stopping
the passage of organic germs from a fermenting into a
fermentable liquid, without checking the passage of fluids;
and as no fermentation was then set up, he drew the inference
that the 'particulate' organic germs, not the soluble material
of the yeast, furnish the primum mobile of this change,—a
doctrine which, though now universally accepted, had to fight
its way for some time against the whole force of chemical
authority. A little before Cagniard de la Tour's discovery, a
set of investigations had been made by Schulze and Schwann, to
determine whether the exclusion of air was absolutely
necessary to prevent the appearance of living organisms in
decomposing fluids, or whether these fluids might be kept free
from animal or vegetable life, by such means as would
presumably destroy any germs which the air admitted to them
might bring in from without, such as passing it through a
red-hot tube or strong sulphuric acid. These experiments, it
should be said, had reference rather to the question of
'spontaneous generation,' or 'abiogenesis,' than to the cause
of fermentation and decomposition; its object being to
determine whether the living things found by the microscope in
a decomposing liquid exposed to the air, spring from germs
brought by the atmosphere, or are generated 'de novo' in the
act of decay—the latter doctrine having then many upholders.
But the discovery of the real nature of yeast, and the
recognition of the part it plays in alcoholic fermentation,
gave an entirely new value to Schulze's and Schwann's results;
suggesting that putrefactive and other kinds of decomposition
may be really due, not (as formerly supposed) to the action of
atmospheric oxygen upon unstable organic compounds, but to a
new arrangement of elements brought about by the development
of germinal particles deposited from the atmosphere. It was at
this point that Pasteur took up the inquiry; and for its
subsequent complete working-out, science is mainly indebted to
him: for although other investigators—notably Professor
Tyndall—have confirmed and extended his conclusions by
ingenious variations on his mode of research, they would be
the first to acknowledge that all those main positions which
have now gained universal acceptance—save on the part of a
few obstinate 'irreconcilables'—have been established by
Pasteur's own labours. … The first application of these
doctrines to the study of disease in the living animal was
made in a very important investigation, committed to Pasteur
by his old master in chemistry (the eminent and eloquent
Dumas), into the nature of the 'pébrine,' which was
threatening to extinguish the whole silk culture of France and
Italy. … Though it concerned only a humble worm, it laid the
foundation of an entirely new system and method of research
into the nature and causes of a large class of diseases in man
and the higher animals, of which we are now only beginning to
see the important issues. Among the most immediately
productive of its results, may be accounted the 'antiseptic
surgery' of Professor Lister; of which the principle is the
careful exclusion of living bacteria and other germs, alike
from the natural internal cavities of the body, and from such
as are formed by disease, whenever these may be laid open by
accident, or may have to be opened surgically. This exclusion
is effected by the judicious use of carbolic acid, which kills
the germs without doing any mischief to the patient; and the
saving of lives, of limbs, and of severe suffering, already
brought about by this method, constitutes in itself a glorious
triumph alike to the scientific elaborator of the
germ-doctrine, and to the scientific surgeon by whom it has
been thus applied. A far wider range of study, however, soon
opened itself. The revival by Dr. Farr of the doctrine of
'zymosis' (fermentation),—long ago suggested by the sagacity
of Robert Boyle, and practically taken up in the middle of the
last century by Sir John Pringle (the most scientific
physician of his time),—as the expression of the effect
produced in the blood by the introduction of a specific poison
(such as that of small-pox, measles, scarlatina, cholera,
typhus, &c.), had naturally directed the attention of
thoughtful men to the question (often previously raised
speculatively), whether these specific poisons are not really
organic germs, each kind of which, a real 'contagium vivum,'
when sown in the circulating fluid, produces a definite
'zymosis' of its own, in the course of which the poison is
reproduced with large increase, exactly after the manner of
yeast in a fermenting wort. Pasteur's success brought this
question to the front, as one not to talk about, but to work at."

_W. B. Carpenter,
Disease-Germs
(Nineteenth Century, October, 1881)._

ALSO IN:
_L. Pasteur,
Studies in Fermentation._

_Dr. Duclaux,
Fermentation._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 19th Century.
Virchow and Cellular Pathology.

"That really gifted scholar and paragon of industry and
attainment, Rudolph Virchow, announced in 1858 a theory known
as Modern Vitalism which was borrowed from natural scientific
medicine and is distinguished from the vitalism of the
previous century in this, that it breaks up the old vital
force, which was supposed to be either distributed throughout
the entire body, or located in a few organs, into an
indefinite number of associate vital forces working
harmoniously, and assigns to them all the final elementary
principles without microscopic seat. 'Every animal principle
has a sum of vital unities, each of which bears all the
characteristics of life.
{2146}
The characteristics and unity of life cannot be found in any
determinate point of a higher organism, e. g., in the brain,
but only in the definite, ever recurring arrangements of each
element present. Hence it results that the composition of a
large body amounts to a kind of social arrangement, in which
each one of the movements of individual existence is dependent
upon the others, but in such a way that each element has a
special activity of its own, and that each, although it
receives the impulse to its own activity from other parts,
still itself performs its own functions.' This it will be seen
is nothing but another way of expressing the cell doctrine to
which most medical men are now committed, which means that our
bodies are built up with cells, and that each cell has a unity
and a purpose of its own. Sir Robert Hooke in 1677 discovered
plant cells. Schwann discovered animal cells, and Robert Brown
discovered cell nuclei, but it remained for Virchow, using the
microscope, to supply the gap which had risen between
anatomical knowledge and medical theory, that is, to supply a
'cellular pathology,' since which time the cell has assumed
the role which the fibre occupied in the theories of the 17th
and 18th centuries. Time alone can decide as to the ultimate
validity of these views. This theory was from its announcement
most enthusiastically received, and so far has responded to
nearly all the requirements which have been made of it. Even
its author was almost startled with its success. … As a
result of Virchow's labors there has arisen in Germany what
has been called the medical school of natural sciences of
which Virchow is the intellectual father. This school seeks
mainly by means of pathological anatomy and microscopy,
experimental physiology and pathology, and the other applied
sciences, or rather by their methods, to make medicine also an
exact science."

_Roswell Park,
Lectures on the History of Medicine (in MS.)._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 19th Century.
The development of Bacteriology.

"The traditional expression contagium vivum received a more
precise meaning in 1840 from Henle, who in his 'Pathologischen
Untersuchungen,' showed clearly and distinctly that the
contagia till then invisible must be regarded as living
organisms, and gave his reasons for this view. … If we are
forced to recognise the characteristic qualities of living
beings in these contagia, there is no good reason why we
should not regard them as real living beings, parasites. For
the only general distinction between their mode of appearance
and operation and that of parasites is, that the parasites
with which we are acquainted have been seen and the contagia
have not. That this may be due to imperfect observation is
shown by the experiments on the itch in 1840, in which the
contagium, the itch-mite, though almost visible without
magnifying power, was long at least misunderstood. It was only
a short time before that the microscopic Fungus, Achorion,
which causes favus, was unexpectedly discovered, as well as
the Fungus which gives rise to the infectious disease in the
caterpillar of the silkworm known as muscardine. Other and
similar cases occurred at a later time, and among them that of
the discovery of the Trichinae between 1850 and 1860, a very
remarkable instance of a contagious parasite long overlooked.
Henle repeated his statements in 1853 in his 'Rationelle
Pathologie,' but for reasons which it is not our business to
examine, his views on animal pathology met with little
attention or approval. It was in connection with
plant-pathology that Henle's views were first destined to
further development, and obtained a firmer footing. It is true
that the botanists who occupied themselves with the diseases
of plants knew nothing of Henle's pathological writings, but
made independent efforts to carry on some first attempts which
had been made with distinguished success in the beginning of
the century. But they did in fact strike upon the path
indicated by Henle, and the constant advance made after, about
the year 1850, resulted not only in the tracing back of all
infectious diseases in plants to parasites as their exciting
cause, but in proving that most of the diseases of plants are
due to parasitic infection. It may now certainly be admitted
that the task was comparatively easy in the vegetable kingdom,
partly because the structure of plants makes them more
accessible to research, partly because most of the parasites
which infect them are true Fungi, and considerably larger than
most of the contagia of animal bodies. From this time
observers in the domain of animal pathology, partly
influenced, more or less, by these discoveries in botany, and
partly in consequence of the revival of the vitalistic theory
of fermentation by Pasteur about the year 1860, returned to
Henle's vitalistic theory of contagion. Henle himself, in the
exposition of his views, had already indicated the points of
comparison between his own theory and the theory of
fermentation founded at that time by Cagniard-Latour and
Schwann. Under the influence, as he expressly says, of
Pasteur's writings, Davaine recalled to mind the little rods
first seen by his teacher, Rayer, in the blood of an animal
suffering from anthrax, and actually discovered in them the
exciting cause of the disease, which may be taken as a type of
an infectious disease both contagious and miasmatic also, in
so far as it originates, as has been said, in
anthrax-districts. This was, in 1863, a very important
confirmation of Henle's theory, inasmuch as a very small
parasite, not very easy of observation at that time, was
recognised as a contagium. It was some time before much
further advance was made. … The latest advance to be
recorded begins with the participation of Robert Koch in the
work of research since 1876."

_A. De Bary,
Lectures on Bacteria,
pages 145-148._

"M. Pasteur is no ordinary man; he is one of the rare
individuals who must be described by the term 'genius.' Having
commenced his scientific career and attained great distinction
as a chemist, M. Pasteur was led by his study of the chemical
process of fermentations to give his attention to the
phenomena of disease in living bodies resembling
fermentations. Owing to a singular and fortunate mental
characteristic, he has been able, not simply to pursue a rigid
path of investigation dictated by the logical or natural
connection of the phenomena investigated, but deliberately to
select for inquiry matters of the most profound importance to
the community, and to bring his inquiries to a successful
practical issue in a large number of instances.
{2147}
Thus he has saved the silkworm industry of France and Italy
from destruction, he has taught the French wine-makers to
quickly mature their wine, he has effected an enormous
improvement and economy in the manufacture of beer, he has
rescued the sheep and cattle of Europe from the fatal disease
'anthrax,' and it is probable—he would not himself assert
that it is at present more than probable—that he has rendered
hydrophobia a thing of the past. The discoveries made by this
remarkable man would have rendered him, had he patented their
application and disposed of them according to commercial
principles, the richest man in the world. They represent a
gain of some millions sterling annually to the community. …
M. Pasteur's first experiment in relation to hydrophobia was
made in December 1880, when he inoculated two rabbits with the
mucus from the mouth of a child which had died of that
disease. As his inquiries extended he found that it was
necessary to establish by means of experiment even the most
elementary facts with regard to the disease, for the existing
knowledge on the subject was extremely small, and much of what
passed for knowledge was only ill-founded tradition."

_E. R. Lankester,
The Advancement of Science,
pages 121-123._

"The development of our knowledge relating to the bacteria,
stimulated by the controversy relating to spontaneous
generation and by the demonstration that various processes of
fermentation and putrefaction are due to microörganisms of
this class, has depended largely upon improvements in methods
of research. Among the most important points in the
development of bacteriological technique we may mention first,
the use of a cotton air filter (Schröder and Von Dusch, 1854);
second, the sterilization of culture fluids by heat (methods
perfected by Pasteur, Koch, and others); third, the use of the
aniline dyes as staining agents (first recommended by Weigert
in 1877); fourth, the introduction of solid culture media and
the 'plate method' for obtaining pure cultures, by Koch in
1881. The various improvements in methods of research, and
especially the introduction of solid culture media and Koch's
'plate method' for isolating bacteria from mixed 'cultures,
have placed bacteriology upon a scientific basis. … It was a
distinguished French physician, Davaine, who first
demonstrated the etiological relation of a microörganism of
this class to a specific infectious disease. The anthrax
bacillus had been seen in the blood of animals dying from this
disease by Pollender in 1849, and by Davaine in 1850, but it
was several years later (1863) before the last-named observer
claimed to have demonstrated by inoculation experiments the
causal relation of the bacillus to the disease in question.
The experiments of Davaine were not generally accepted as
conclusive, because in inoculating an animal with blood
containing the bacillus, from an infected animal which had
succumbed to the disease, the living microörganism was
associated with material from the body of the diseased animal.
This objection was subsequently removed by the experiments of
Pasteur, Koch, and many others, with pure cultures of the
bacillus, which were shown to have the same pathogenic effects
as had been obtained in inoculation experiments with the blood
of an infected animal."

_G. M. Sternberg,
Manual of Bacteriology,
page 6._

"In 1876 the eminent microscopist, Professor Cohn, of Breslau,
was in London, and he then handed me a number of his
'Beiträge,' containing a memoir by Dr. Koch on Splenic Fever
(Milzbrand, Charbon, Malignant Pustule), which seemed to me to
mark an epoch in the history of this formidable disease. With
admirable patience, skill, and penetration Koch followed up
the life-history of bacillus anthracis, the contagium of this
fever. At the time here referred to he was a young physician
holding a small appointment in the neighbourhood of Breslau,
and it was easy to predict, and indeed I predicted at the
time, that he would soon find himself in a higher position.
When I next heard of him he was head of the Imperial Sanitary
Institute of Berlin. … Koch was not the discoverer of the
parasite of splenic fever. Davaine and Rayer, in 1850, had
observed the little microscopic rods in the blood of animals
which had died of splenic fever. But they were quite
unconscious of the significance of their observation, and for
thirteen years, as M. Radot informs us, strangely let the
matter drop. In 1863 Davaine's attention was again directed to
the subject by the researches of Pasteur, and he then
pronounced the parasite to be the cause of the fever. He was
opposed by some of his fellow-countrymen; long discussions
followed, and a second period of thirteen years, ending with
the publication of Koch's paper, elapsed before M. Pasteur
took up the question. I always, indeed, assumed that from the
paper of the learned German came the impulse towards a line of
inquiry in which M. Pasteur has achieved such splendid
results."

_J. Tyndall,
New Fragments,
pages 190-191._

"On the 24th of March, 1882, an address of very serious public
import was delivered by Dr. Koch before the Physiological
Society of Berlin. … The address … is entitled 'The
Etiology of Tubercular Disease.' Koch first made himself
known, and famous, by the penetration, skill, and thoroughness
of his researches on the contagium of anthrax, or splenic
fever. … Koch's last inquiry deals with a disease which, in
point of mortality, stands at the head of them all. 'If,' he
says, 'the seriousness of a malady be measured by the number
of its victims, then the most dreaded pests which have
hitherto ravaged the world—plague and cholera included—must
stand far behind the one now under consideration.' Then
follows the startling statement that one-seventh of the deaths
of the human race are due to tubercular disease. Prior to Koch
it had been placed beyond doubt that the disease was
communicable; and the aim of the Berlin physician has been to
determine the precise character of the contagium which
previous experiments on inoculation and inhalation had proved
to be capable of indefinite transfer and reproduction. He
subjected the diseased organs of a great number of men and
animals to microscopic examination, and found, in all cases,
the tubercles infested by a minute, rod-shaped parasite, which
by means of a special dye, he differentiated from the
surrounding tissue. 'It was,' he says, 'in the highest degree
impressive to observe in the centre of the tubercle-cell the
minute organism which had created it.' Transferring directly,
by inoculation, the tuberculous matter from diseased animals
to healthy ones, he in every instance reproduced the disease.
To meet the objection that it was not the parasite itself, but
some virus in which it was imbedded in the diseased organ,
that was the real contagium, he cultivated his bacilli
artificially for long periods of time and through many
successive generations.
{2148}
With a speck of matter, for example, from a tuberculous human
lung, he infected a substance prepared, after much trial, by
himself, with the view of affording nutriment to the parasite.
In this medium he permitted it to grow and multiply: From the
new generation he took a minute sample, and infected therewith
fresh nutritive matter, thus producing another brood.
Generation after generation of bacilli were developed in this
way, without the intervention of disease. At the end of the
process, which sometimes embraced successive cultivations
extending over half a year, the purified bacilli were
introduced into the circulation of healthy animals of various
kinds. In every case inoculation was followed by the
reproduction and spread of the parasite, and the generation of
the original disease. … The moral of these experiments is
obvious. In no other conceivable way than that pursued by Koch
could the true character of the most destructive malady by
which humanity is now assailed be determined. And however
noisy the fanaticism of the moment may be, the common-sense of
Englishmen will not, in the long run, permit it to enact
cruelty in the name of tenderness, or to debar us from the
light and leading of such investigations as that which is here
so imperfectly described."

_J. Tyndall,
New Fragments,
pages 423-428._

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 19th Century.
The Theory of Germ Diseases.

"An account of the innumerable questions and investigations in
this department of modern pathogenesis, of the various views
on certain questions, etc., does not fall within the compass
of our brief sketch. Nor are we able to furnish a consistent
theory, simply because such an one does not [1889] exist. One
fact alone is agreed upon, to wit, that certain of the lower
fungi, as parasites within or upon the body, excite diseases
(infectious diseases). As regards the modus operandi of these
parasites two main theories are held. According to one theory,
these parasites, by their development, deprive the body of its
nutriment and endanger life particularly when, thronging in
the blood, they deprive this of the oxygen necessary for
existence. According to the other theory, they threaten life
by occasioning decompositions which engender putrid poisons
(ptomaines). These latter poisons were first isolated by P. L.
Panum in 1856, and have been recently specially studied by
Brieger (Ueber Ptomaine, Berlin, 1885-86). They act
differently upon bodies according to the variety of the
alkaloidal poison. Metschnikoff regards the white
blood-corpuscles as antagonists of these parasites (thus
explaining the cases of recovery from parasitic diseases), and
in this point of view calls them 'phagocytes.' On the other
hand E. Salmon and Theodore Smith ('Transactions of the
Washington Biological Society, February 22d, 1886) were the
first to demonstrate that sterilized nutritive solutions or
germ-free products of change of matter of the virulent
exciters of disease, when injected, afford protection. A.
Chauveau as early as 1880 had brought forward evidence of the
probability of this fact, and Hans Buchner in 1879 admitted
the possibility of depriving bacteria of their virulence.
Pasteur, however, believes he has demonstrated that by
continued cultures (also a sort of bacillary Isopathy)
'debilitated' germs act as prophylactics against the
corresponding parasitic diseases, and he even thinks he has
confirmed this by his inoculations against hydrophobia—a
view, at all events, still open to doubt. … The chief
diseases regarded as of parasitic origin at present are:
anthrax (Davaine, 1850); relapsing fever (Obermeier, 1873);
gonorrhœa and blenorrhœa neonatorum (Neisser, 1879); glanders
(Struck, 1882, Loeffler and Schütz); syphilis (Sigm.
Lustgarten, 1884); diphtheria (Oertel, Letzerich, Klebs);
typhus (Eberle, Klebs); tuberculosis (Koch, 1882); cholera
(Koch, 1884); lepra (Armauer-Hansen); actinomycosis (Bollinger
in cattle, 1877; Israel in man, 1884); septicæmia (Klebs);
erysipelas (Fehleisen); pneumonia (Friedländer); malarial
fever (Klebs, Tommasi-Crudeli, Marchiafava); malignant œdema
(Koch); tetanus (Carle and Rattone, Nicolaier, Roeschlaub
assumed a tetania occasioned by bacilli); cancer (Scheuerlen;
priority contested by Dr. G. Rappia and Prof. Domingo Freire
of Rio Janeiro); yellow fever (microbe claimed to have been
discovered by Freire); dysentery (bacillary diphtheritis of
the large intestine); cholera nostras (Finkler and Prior);
scarlet fever (Coze and Feltz, '72); variola and vaccina
(Keber, Zülzer, Weigert, Klebs); acute yellow atrophy of the
liver (Klebs, Waldeyer, Eppinger); endocarditis (Ziegler);
hæmophilia neonatorum (Klebs, Eppinger); trachoma (Sattler);
keratitis (Leber—aspergillus); ulcus rodens corneæ (Sattler);
gonorrhœal rheumatism (Petrone, Kammerer). If the bacterial
theory of infection, constantly threatening life by such
numerous pathogenic varieties of infecting organisms, must be
looked upon as a gloomy one, the anti-bacterial Phagocyte
Theory of Metschnikoff, professor of zoology in Odessa, is
adapted to make one feel more comfortable, inasmuch as it
brings into view the possibility of an antagonism to these
infecting organisms, and explains the method of nature's
cures. Metschnikoff observed that the wandering cells—the
white blood corpuscles—after the manner of amœbæ, surround,
hold fast, digest ('devour,' hence 'phagocytes'), and thus
render harmless the bacteria which have entered the body. …
The prophylactic effects of inoculation are explained on the
theory that by means of this operation the wandering cells are
prepared, as it were, for subsequent accidental irruptions of
similar pathogenic bacteria, are habituated or compelled
thereby to at once devour such organisms when they enter the
body spontaneously, and thus to render them harmless.
Inoculation would thus be a sort of training or education of
the phagocytes. The immunity of many persons from infectious
diseases, so far as it is not effected by inoculations, would
by analogy be explained on the theory that with such
individuals the phagocytes are from the outset so constituted
that they at once render harmless any stray bacteria which
come within their domain by immediately devouring them. …
When … in spite of the phagocytes, the patients die of
infectious diseases, the fact is to be explained by the
excessive number of the bacteria present, which is so great
that the phagocytes are unequal to the task of 'devouring'
them all."

_J. H. Baas,
Outlines of the History of Medicine,
pages 1007-1009._

{2149}

MEDICAL SCIENCE: 19th Century.
Sanitary Science and Legislation.

"Together with the growth of our knowledge of the causes of
disease there has been … slowly growing up also a new kind
of warfare against disease. It is this science of hygiene
which is now promising to transform all the old traditional
ways of dealing with disease, and which now makes possible the
organisation of the conditions of health. And this science of
hygiene, it must be repeated, rests on the exact knowledge of
the causes of disease which we are now obtaining. … At the
beginning of the eighteenth century Mead, a famous physician
of that day, whose reputation still lives, had proposed the
formation of a central board of health to organise common
measures for the public safety. It was not, however, until
more than a hundred years later, in 1831, under the influence
of the terror of cholera, that this first step was taken; so
that, as it has been well said and often since proved, 'panic
is the parent of sanitation.' In 1842 Sir Edwin Chadwick
issued his report on 'The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring
Population of Great Britain.' This report produced marked
effect, and may truly be said to have inaugurated the new era
of collective action, embodying itself in legislation directed
to the preservation of national health, an era which is thus
just half a century old. Chadwick's report led to a Royal
Commission, which was the first step in the elevation of
public health to a State interest; and a few years later
(1847) Liverpool, and immediately afterwards London, appointed
the first medical officers of health in Great Britain. In 1848
another epidemic of cholera appeared, and a General Board of
Health was established. During this epidemic Dr. Snow began
those inquiries which led to the discovery that the spread of
the disease was due to the contamination of drinking-water by
the intestinal discharges of patients. That discovery marked
the first great stage in the new movement. Henceforth the
objects to be striven for in the evolution of sanitation
became ever more clear and precise, and a succession of
notable discoveries in connection with various epidemics
enlarged the sphere of sanitation, and revealed new
possibilities in the prevention of human misery."

_H. Ellis,
The Nationalisation of Health,
pages 21-24._

"Of all countries of the civilized world, none has a sanitary
code so complete and so precise as England. In addition,
English legislation is distinguished from that of other
countries, by the fact that the principal regulations emanate
from Parliament instead of being simple administrative orders.
Thus the legislation is the work of the nation, which has
recognised its necessity in its own interest. Consequently the
laws are respected, and, as a rule, religiously observed,
without objection or murmur. In the whole country, the
marvellous results which have been produced can be seen.
Thanks to these laws, the rate of mortality has been lowered,
the mean duration of life increased, the amount of sickness
decreased. They have greatly alleviated the misery in the
houses of the poor, who, thanks to sanitary measures, have a
better prospect of recovering their health and the means of
providing for their subsistence and that of their families.
… The sanitary administration of England is, in accordance
with the Public Health Act of 1875, in the hands of a central
authority, the Local Government Board; and local authorities,
the Local Boards of Health. The Local Government Board
consists of a president, nominated by the Queen, and the
following ex-officio members:—the Lord President of the Privy
Council, all the principal Secretaries of State for the time
being, the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a
Parliamentary Secretary, and a permanent Secretary. The
President and Secretaries are, properly speaking, the
directors of the Local Government Board, the other members
being only consulted on matters of prime importance. Nine
special departments are controlled by the Local Government
Board:

1. Poor-law administration.
2. Legal questions.
3. Sanitary regulations respecting buildings.
4. Sanitary regulations respecting sewers, streets, etc.
5. Medical and hygienic matters.
6. Vaccination.
7. The Hygiene of factories.
8. The water supply of London.
9. Statistics.

Medical and sanitary matters are under the direction of a
Medical Officer, and an Assistant Medical Officer."

_A. Palmberg,
Treatise on Public Health: England,
chapter 1._

"The United States have no uniform legislation for the
organization of public hygiene to the present day. Each State
organizes this service as it chooses. … That which
characterizes the sanitary organization of the States is the
fact that, in a large number of States, the right is granted
to the sanitary administrations to carry before the justices
the infractions of the regulations on this subject. It is a
similar organization to that of Great Britain, with a little
less independence, and it is the logical result of the general
system of administration which exists in the American Union.
… Without doubt the day will come when the National Board of
Health will be by act of Congress, with the consent of all the
States, the real superior council of public hygiene of the
American Union."

_E. Sève,
On the General Organization of Public Hygiene
(Proceedings, International Sanitary Conference, 1881)._

"The General Government [of the United States] can do little
in the way of compulsory legislation, which might interfere
with the action of the several States to control their own
sanitary affairs. It is possible that upon the ground of power
to legislate with regard to commerce, it might establish some
general system of quarantine and do something toward the
prevention of the pollution of navigable streams; but it could
probably only do this with such restrictions and exceptions as
would make its action of little practical value, unless,
indeed, it should resort to its right of eminent domain, and
become liable for all damages, individual or municipal, which
its action might cause. … No one would deny that the General
Government can properly create an organization for the purpose
of collecting and diffusing information on sanitary matters;
but comparatively few understand how much real power and
influence such an organization might acquire without having
the slightest legal authority to enforce any of its
recommendations. The passing of sanitary laws, and the
granting to a certain department the power to enforce these
laws, will not ensure good public health unless the public at
large supports those laws intelligently, and it can only do
this through State and municipal sanitary organizations. The
General Government might do much to promote the formation of
such organizations, and to assist them in various ways. … By
the 'act to prevent the introduction of infectious or
contagious diseases into the United States, and to establish a
national board of health,' approved March 3, 1879, the first
step has been taken in the direction above indicated.
{2150}
The act provides for a national board of health, to consist of
seven members, appointed by the President, and of four
officers detailed from the Medical Department of the Army,
Medical Department of the Navy, and the Marine Hospital
Service, and the Department of Justice respectively. No
definite term of Office is prescribed, the Board being
essentially provisional in character. The duties of the board
are 'to obtain information upon all matters affecting the
public health, to advise the several departments of the
government, the executives of the several States, and the
Commissioners of the District of Columbia, on all questions
submitted by them, or whenever in the opinion of the board
such advice may tend to the preservation and improvement of
the public health.' The board is also directed to prepare a
plan for a national public health organization in conjunction
with the National Academy of Sciences."

_J. S. Billings,
Introduction to "A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health,"
edited by A. IL Buck._

ALSO IN:
_Sir J. Simon,
English Sanitary Institutions_

_Sir J. Simon,
Public Health: Reports of the Medical Officer
of the Privy Council and Local Government Board._

_United States National Board of Health, Annual Reports._

_Massachusetts Board of Health, Annual Reports._

----------MEDICAL SCIENCE: End----------

MEDICI, The.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1378-1427, and after.

----------MEDINA: Start--------

MEDINA: the City of the Prophet.

By Mahomet's Hegira or flight from Mecca to Yethrib, A. D.
622, the latter city became the seat of Islam and was
henceforward known as Medina—Medinet-en-Neby—"the City of
the Prophet."

_S. Lane-Poole,
Studies in a Mosque,
chapter 2._

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 609-632.

MEDINA: A. D. 661.
The Caliphate transferred.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 661.

MEDINA: A. D. 683.
Stormed and sacked.

In the civil war which followed the accession of Yezid, the
second of the Omeyyad caliphs, Medina was besieged and stormed
by Yezid's army and given up for three days to every
imaginable brutality on the part of the soldiery. The
inhabitants who survived were made slaves.

_Sir W. Muir,
Annals of the Early Caliphate,
chapter 50._

ALSO IN:
_W. Irving,
Mahomet and his Successors,
volume 2, chapter 47._

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 715-750.

----------MEDINA: End----------

MEDINA DEL RIO SECO, Battle of.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (MAY-SEPTEMBER).

MEDIOLANUM.

Modern Milan. Taken by the Romans in 222 B. C. from the
Insubrian Gauls.

See ROME: B. C. 295-191.

MEDIOMATRICI.

The original form of the name of the city of Metz, which had
been called Divodurum by the Gauls at an earlier day.

MEDISM. MEDIZED GREEKS.

During the wars of the Persians against the Greeks, the former
had many friends and allies, both secret and open, among the
latter. These were commonly called Medized Greeks, and their
treason went by the name of Medism.

MEDITERRANEAN FUND.

A special fund provided by the United States Congress, in
1803, for the War with Tripoli.

_H. Adams,
History of the United States,
volume 2, chapter 7._

MEDITERRANEAN SEA:
When named.

"For this sea … the Greeks had no distinctive name, because
it had so long been practically the only one known to them;
and Strabo can only distinguish it as 'the Inner' or 'Our'
Sea. … The now familiar appellation of Mediterranean is in
like manner first used by Solinus [third century], only as a
convenient designation, not as a strictly geographical term.
… The first extant author who employs it distinctly as a
proper name is Isidorus, who wrote in the seventh century."

_E: H. Bunbury,
History of Ancient Geography,
chapter 21, section 1,
chapter 23, section 2, foot-note,
chapter 31 (volume 2)._

MEERUT, The Sepoy mutiny at.

See INDIA: A. D. 1857 (MAY).

MEGALESIA, The.

See LUDI.

----------MEGALOPOLIS: Start--------

MEGALOPOLIS: B. C. 371.
The founding of the city.

See GREECE: B. C. 371.

MEGALOPOLIS: B. C. 317.
Defense against Polysperchon.

See GREECE: B. C. 321-312.

MEGALOPOLIS: B. C. 222.
Destruction and restoration.

The last exploit of Cleomenes of Sparta, in his struggle with
the Achæan League and its ally, the king of Macedonia, before
the fatal field of Sellasia, was the capture of Megalopolis,
B. C. 222. Most of the citizens escaped. He offered to restore
their town to them, if they would forsake the League. They
refused, and he destroyed it, so utterly that its restoration
was believed to be impossible. But in the following year the
inhabitants were brought back and Megalopolis existed again,
though never with its former importance.

_Polybius,
Histories,
book 2, chapter 55 and after (volume 1)._

MEGALOPOLIS: B. C. 194-183.
In the Achaian League.

"The city of Megalopolis held at this time [B. C. 194-183] the
same sort of position in the Achaian League which the State of
Virginia held in the first days of the American Union. Without
any sort of legal preëminence, without at all assuming the
character of a capital, Megalopolis was clearly the first city
of the League, the city which gave the nation the largest
proportion of its leading statesmen. Megalopolis, like
Virginia, was 'the Mother of Presidents,' and that too of
Presidents of different political parties. As Virginia
produced both Washington and Jefferson, so Megalopolis, if she
produced Philopoimen and Lykortas, produced also Aristainos
and Diophanes."

_E. A. Freeman,
History of Federal Government,
chapter 9, section 2._

----------MEGALOPOLIS: End--------

----------MEGARA: Start--------

MEGARA.

Megara, the ancient Greek city and state whose territory lay
between Attica and Corinth, forming part of the Corinthian
isthmus, "is affirmed to have been originally settled by the
Dorians of Corinth, and to have remained for some time a
dependency of that city. It is farther said to have been at
first merely one of five separate villages—Megara, Heræa,
Peiræa, Kynosura, Tripodiskus—inhabited by a kindred
population, and generally on friendly terms, yet sometimes
distracted by quarrels. …

See CORINTH: B. C. 745-725.

Whatever may be the truth respecting this alleged early
subjection of Megara, we know it in the historical age, and
that too as early as the 14th Olympiad, only as an independent
Dorian city, maintaining the integrity of its territory under its
leader Orsippus, the famous Olympic runner, against some
powerful enemies, probably the Corinthians. It was of no mean
consideration, possessing a territory which extended across
Mount Geraneia to the Corinthian Gulf, on which the fortified
town and port of Pêgæ, belonging to the Megarians, was
situated. It was mother of early and distant colonies,—and
competent, during the time of Solon, to carry on a protracted
contest with the Athenians, for the possession of Salamis;
wherein, although the latter were at last victorious, it was
not without an intermediate period of ill-success and
despair."

_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 9._

See, also, GREECE: THE MIGRATIONS.

{2151}

MEGARA: B. C. 610-600.
Struggle with Athens for Salamis.
Spartan arbitration favorable to the Athenians.

See ATHENS: B. C. 610-586.

MEGARA: B. C. 458-456.
Alliance with Athens in war with Corinth and Ægina.

See GREECE: B. C. 458-456.

MEGARA: B. C. 446-445.
Rising against Athens.

See GREECE: B. C. 449-445.

MEGARA: B. C. 431-424.
Athenian invasions and ravages.

See ATHENS: B. C. 431.

MEGARA: B. C. 339-338.
Resistance to Philip of Macedon.

See GREECE: B. C. 357-336.

----------MEGARA: End--------

MEGARA OF CARTHAGE, The.

See CARTHAGE: DIVISIONS.

MEGIDDO.

The valley of Megiddo, forming the western part of the great
Plain of Esdraelon, in northern Palestine—stretching from the
valley of the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, along the
course of the river Kishon—was the field of many important
battles in ancient times. Thothmes III. of the eighteenth
Egyptian dynasty, whose reign is placed about 1600 B. C., met
there, near the city of Megiddo, and defeated a confederacy of
Syrian and Canaanite princes who attempted to throw off his
yoke. A remarkable account of his victory and of the spoils he
took is preserved in inscriptions on the walls of the temple
at Karnak.

_H. Brugsch,
History of Egypt,
chapter 13 (volume 1)._

It was at Megiddo, also, that Sisera, commanding the forces of
the Canaanites, was beaten and driven to flight by the
Israelites under Barak. Gideon's' assault on the Midianites
was from the slope of Mount Gilboa, which rises out of the
same valley. The latter battle has been called by historians
the Battle of Jezreel, and Jezreel is one of the forms of the
name of the valley of Esdraelon. It was there that the
Philistines were arrayed when Saul fought his last battle with
them, and on the slopes of Gilboa he fell on his sword and
died. On the same historic plain, near the city of Megiddo,
Josiah, king of Judah, fought against Necho, the Pharaoh of
Egypt, B. C. 609, and was defeated and mortally wounded. The
plain of Megiddo was so often, in fact, the meeting place of
ancient armies that it seems to have come to be looked upon as
the typical battle-ground, and apparently the name Armageddon
in Revelations is an allusion to it in that sense. The ancient
city of Megiddo has been identified in site with the present
town of Ledjûn, which is the Legio of the Romans—the station
of a Roman legion.

MEGISTANES, The.