system, yet he becomes but little warmer. This extra consumption of fuel in the system is spent not in the generation of heat, but in doing work. It is well known that a person working in the noonday summer's sun suffers less with heat than one sitting quietly at the house in the shade. The reason of this is, so much of the force produced by the burning of the fuel in the body of the man laboring in the sun is required to produce that labor, that but little of it is left to produce heat. The burning of the fuel in the body of the man sitting in the shade nearly all goes to generate heat, as but little force is required to do the labor of sitting still. The man at labor often gasps for breath, which fans the flames within his body without warming him, because the increased combustion is converted into labor, and not into heat. In summer nights one will often sit with his clothes on, comfortably cool till bedtime, but as soon as he undresses and lies down he becomes too warm to sleep. This is because less labor is required to lie down than to sit up; the combustion then is nearly all spent in heating the body and but little in the exercise of labor, hence the man for a while becomes too hot until the fires of his system gradually die down.

In the winter the vital fires burn stronger than in summer in order to keep the body up to normal temperature. A man can do more work in summer than in winter, because less of his vital energies are required in warming him, more or less, therefore, to be spent in labor or thought. It is well, therefore, for man that the winter days are shorter than the summer days.

The combustion going on in the system is in proportion to the amount of oxygen consumed by the lungs. A person will consume more out of doors than he will in the house, because he requires more internal heat to keep him warm. Even being under a tree will lessen one's respirations, for a tree checks the radiation of heat from his body, and he needs less heat then to keep warm.

We will now consider the application of these facts to the treatment of pulmonary diseases. Open air and out-of-door exercises have been generally recommended by the doctors

for consumptives. It is not the freshness of open air that is so very beneficial, for the air in a well-ventilated room is as fresh and pure as that out of doors. Whatever conditions increase the consumption of oxygen serve to purify the lungs of microbi, of phlegm, or of whatever may improperly be there. The conditions then are plain; whatever tends to increase the breathing benefits the consumptive. Open air, exercise, cold weather, clothing as thin as comfortable, are the most beneficial conditions to all pulmonary diseases. All excesses, however, of cold, of exercise, etc., ought to be avoided. Windy weather is not generally healthy for the patient, for it cools one side of the body more than the other, and hence is likely to bring on cold.

Hydro-carbonaceous foods, or those of an oily, starchy or sugary nature, tend to increase the breathing, hence they are specially prescribed for consumption, but mostly in a form that costs money, as codliver oil. I think said oil is certainly a good diet for such patients, but surely not better than butter, rich cream or fat meat, for these have the advantage of being palatable while the fish oil is not, and is even nauseating in some cases.

Alcoholic drinks increase the breathing more, perhaps, than any known medicine or diet, hence it has often been very highly indorsed, but it has two disadvantages: one is, it does its good by reducing the system, by destroying the vitality of the body. Oily bodies supply fuel to the furnace, while alcohol burns the furnace itself, hence must do more harm than good. The second is, the danger of contracting a bad habit.

Now suppose a person has no pulmonary affection, but is tired and needs rest and a rebuilding of the body wasted away by excessive labor, then these conditions should be reversed. Let him retire to a comfortable room where his breathing will be low and not exhaustive, where the fires of his body will consume but little of the muscle and fibre of flesh. In such cases air somewhat diluted with carbolic acid is better. The raccoon sleeps in his hollow, the goose puts her head under her wing, the squirrel spreads his bushy tail over his nose, other bushy-tailed animals do the same, burrowing

animals go into the ground and wild beasts in their lairs, to sleep. Children in winter often sleep with covered heads. A comfortable room with not too much ventilation gives sounder and more refreshing sleep to a weary man than a room freely ventilated. The air is not easily poisoned by exhalations. Carbonic acid gas is one of the most soothing narcotics known. This and other products of the exhalations, except in large quantities, produce no evil on being reinhaled. The lungs throw them off once and will do so again, for they absorb nothing but oxygen. We want, then, but little oxygen while asleep, and much while at work.

THE GERM THEORY.

H. S. ROBERTSON, M.D., TUPELO, MISS.

There are quite a number of ideas which are parts mainly of one theory, viz., the germ. This has received more support and acceptance than any other idea, and to-day, by a large majority, considered almost, if not quite, an established theory. It is so safely stated in the very term itself that one could hardly assail it. It does not necessarily imply, nor should it be forced to imply, a living, moving animalcule, with a vital apparatus for nutrition and growth, with powers of reproduction and transportation. Is it like herds of cattle, gangs of birds, schools of fish, and swarms of insects, feeding, flying, swimming, basking in the vital fluids of the economy, a menagerie in a zoological garden? It may include, yet it does not necessarily imply a vegetating sporule or cryptogamic growth, budding, blooming, fruiting, with a grand sporal multiplication, until the human economy is in danger of being transformed into flagrant flowers, or branching bushes, or perchance not quite so strong in statement, a cryptogamic garden in the fluids and solids of the system. It does imply an organic germ capable at least of multiplying itself into myriads of the same species, distinct and specific, operating in disturbing force and energy in the system, increasing in numbers until the human economy is turbulated into the highest excitement and commotion. The normal forces rally under the prompting of conservatism; the deadly conflict begins;

the natural forces may fail, and art must lay to the helping hand to do what nature fails to accomplish. The enemy perchance, strong and determined, may claim its victim and drag him down to the last resting place, the common fate of allmankind. The man or woman is dead by vital germs.

Just here I will say that the germ idea has so much indefiniteness, so much elasticity about it, I really can't tell what it does imply. It might be well for the field of etiology for some one to define it, so that if it does not give satisfaction and harmonize with the developments, it can be rejected. I propose then in the first place to define a germ: A germ is an ultimate elemental vital organism, capable of developing another germ just like itself, containing its own histogenetic and histolytic forces; these acting until the full development is effected, of which it was the germ. The ovum or graffian vesicle in contact with the womb, impregnated by the male germ, with the forces contained within it, makes a perfect human being. The acorn, germinating and growing, makes the majestic oak of the forest. The seed for the plant, the ovum for the human development. The single microscopic molecule, by the forces within it, makes another and higher stage of development, and by a union of forces makes cells, fibres, facciculi, membranes and muscles, and indeed the whole human economy. The homogeneous chyme, by vital and chemical forces is prepared, and from which a large number of corpuscles or molecules make the blood supply, from which,. by the same histogenetic and histolytic forces, every part of the system is nourished and kept up. The seed contains the ultimate corpuscles or molecules, which, with the conditions. of vegetable growth, make the plant. These ultimates arecytoblast of molecules, which exist only by the same mole-cular action inherent in their nature and active in their own

special productions, not de novo but de ovo The egg of the bird is nothing but an amorphous protoplasm with its different molecules and molecular development, which can, by its own inherent or natural forces, produce another of the same species. Every seed-maker unequivocally its own plant. Every egg its own bird. No fortuitous combination could effect such things. The man who attempted to make an arti

ficial egg did not succeed. The brewer's yeast is in no sense a germ. Fermentation makes a product, but not a specific vital organic microbe. There can be no spontaneous production of germs, and they must date the origination back to

creation itself.

I shall not make the germ question an extended one in this discussion, simply because the five correlated propositions bear naturally on each other, elucidate each other, and establish fully what one could only intimate or suggest as true. If one idea is true, all must be. Now, upon this subject I will suggest that there are some positive and inseparable dif ficulties attaching to the germ hypothesis. (1). The de novo production of diseases which look to it as the cause. (2). The necessary specificity of the theory has often no counterpart in the developments. (3). The law in nature, that like produces like, and its extension, like causes produce like effects, do not harmonize with known manifestations and development of germs. (4). The whole class of diseases, for which is claimed a germinal cause, do not represent the standard of specific diseases, since specific causes must produce specific effects. (5). The law of unity is ignored. The history of them is protean, hydra and mongrel. Now, by the germ idea, these questions can never be answered, the difficulties removed and the mysteries solved. I am not inclined to deny the deductions of Koch, Freire and Pasteur; those tend to prove a theory, and these innumerable objections go to invalidate the idea. So far my deductions are strictly a posteoriori. Like the Indian who found the watch in the wilderness, after a close examination he decided that the thing was different from any thing he had ever seen in nature, and that the white face made it, and not the Great Spirit. I reason on this subject from the effects to the causes, and such conclusions are as legitimate as any a priori deductions could be. In this way I feel that the inevitable necessity forces itself upon me to reject the germ hypothesis, as insufficient to account for all the ununiform, untyped and irregular deportment of that class of diseases for which a specific germ is claimed.