Excerpt from An Introduction to Practical Bacteriology: A Guide for Students and General Practitioners

As prefatory to this subject, I think it advisable to reproduce some of the points of a paper read in Philadelphia, before the International Medical Con gress, of 1876, partly because certain conclusions were there maintained in the section on sanitary sci ence, before which the topic was discussed, and be cause they were further sustained by the Congress sitting as a whole, and also for the reason that they will serve as a fitting introduction to the general sub jcet. And it may be remembered, incidentally, that at that remarkable gathering there were present some of the most prominent advocates* of what was then called the germ-theory. In enumerating at that time the various theories and hypotheses that had been framed to explain the origin of infective diseases, three were given, viz.: (i) the vegetable germ, (2) the bioplasm, (3) the physico-chemical, and they were brie¿y sketched as follows.

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