How incredible it seems that masses of living matter can
make their way through the walls of blood vessels which do not rupture
and which have no visible apertures!
Virchow fixed his attention upon the forms and activities of the
cells, their multiplication and degradation, and how they build up
tissues, both healthy and morbid.
To another matter with which, both literally and metaphorically, the
air is filled, we must also make allusion. The existence of
micro-organisms in countless numbers is no new fact, but the influence
they may exert over living tissues has only lately become the subject
of earnest attention. So long as they were not known to have any
practical bearing upon human welfare, they interested almost nobody,
but when, however, it was shown that putrefaction of meat is due to
the agency of the _bacterium termo_, and the decomposition of albumen
to the _bacillus subtilis_; when anthrax in cattle and sheep was found
to depend on the _bacillus anthracis_, and that in human beings it
caused malignant pustules; when suppuration of wounds was found to be
associated with micrococci; and when it was announced that by a
process of inoculation cattle could be protected against anthrax, and
that by carbolic spray and other well known precautions the
suppuration of wounds could be prevented--all the world lent its ears
and investigation at once began.
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