John Grove

“ I cannot conceive it possible that the Intellects, which are occupied in procuring means for the Majesty of this empire to issue her mandates with the velocity of a spirit to the nethermost parts of the earth, should be incapable of solving so deeply interesting a mystery as the causes and nature of pestilential diseases. It would seem that man prefers to issue a mandate of destruction many thousand miles distant, than to disarm the pestilence at his door. ”

“ To say that a disease commenced in the East and travelled westward, and at length found a habitation and a name in every part of the globe, is no more than to say that disease is coeval with the fall of man. ”

“ The all-bountiful hand of nature, I do not doubt, has at the same time scattered the seeds of good and of evil. The fertilizing showers fall to irrigate the soil, and produce food and nourishment to man; here and there is the reeking morass "feeding unnatural vegetation," and if man takes up his abode in its vicinity, the rains which made it unhealthy, have also made it highly fertile; by labour and cultivation he may convert the mephitic bog into a waving corn-field, and the seeds of life and sustenance be made to supplant the seeds of death and corruption. ”

“ The destruction of vegetables by insects, is of a very different nature to that produced by the fungi; it would be as unreasonable to consider the consumption of corn and herbage by locusts, as a disease of vegetation, as the massacre and devouring of human beings by cannibals, a disease of the human body.
It is true that insects are exceedingly destructive to plants, but as far as I am able to obtain information, they appear to be so chiefly by their voracious propensities; they consume the structure of the plant in its entity, and do not primarily interfere with its vitality. ”

“ And this is the law, the germs of all disease exist, and have existed. Despise the dictates of nature, be careless of yourself and those around you, neglect to use the means which a noble intelligence has placed at your command, and above all, transgress the laws of God, then will disease pursue and attend you, as the conscience of the murderer pursues and attends him until he is finally cut off. ”

“ It is by the unseen forms of living beings, that the atmosphere is preserved from becoming charged with deadly gases; they take the first rank in the great scheme of animated beings, the plant first, and then the animal. "Let the earth bring forth grass." "Let there be lights in the firmament." "Let the waters bring forth the moving creature, and fowl that may fly," and "Let the earth bring forth the cattle, the creeping thing, and the beast." This is the order of creation, of living things, and the earth was prepared by vegetation for the animal world. ”

“ I will make but two more quotations on the supposed vital character of the germs of disease. "That the air and atmosphere of our globe is in the highest degree full of life, I may, I think, take here for granted, and generally admitted. It is, however, of a mixed kind and quality, combining the refreshing breath of spring with the parching simooms of the desert, and where the healthy odours fluctuate in chaotic struggle with the most deadly vapours. What else in general is the wide-spread and spreading pestilence, but a living propagation of foulness, corruption, and death? ”

“ Disease, in its most enlarged sense, is a conversion of one form of matter into another; it is a transformation of healthy blood and tissue into new and abnormal products. Where insects in all their variety of forms are discovered, their voracious propensities are their chief characteristics, they are the consumers of matter after its partial disintegration, if animal matter be their food, unless they be carnivorous and predacious, or if herbivorous they usually feed upon the tender shoots of plants. Thus far we are certain of the manner in which insects destroy living matter ”

“ The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave to thee until he have consumed thee from off the land.—The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the drought, and with blasting, and with mildew, and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.—The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee until thou be destroyed. ”

“ The fungi, by which we contend this transition appears to be accomplished, are also a link in chemical composition, between the animal and vegetable kingdom, and not only in that, but in their subsisting upon matter which has been organized, they are deoxidizers and reducers, as the vegetable kingdom in its highest function is a compounder. To their functions and offices in the great scheme of creation, we may fairly apply ourselves with a sure and certain result of the most interesting discovery. Is it no hint that wherever decaying organic matter is found, there do we find fungi? ”

“ To what particular element was it—in the mode of living, of destitution, of filth and want of drainage—can it be ascribed that we suffer under one disease, and not under the other?
We have made some few observations and comparisons on the mode of dispersion of plants and diseases,—but there is yet one more point which invites notice. Not only do seasons vary in their effects on vegetation in a remarkable and unexplained manner, but there are many localities to which some special form of vegetation attaches, and which appear to have a power of exclusion of other forms ”

“ The history of the introduction of Scarlet Fever, Hooping Cough, Lues, and other diseases into the various countries of the globe, is sufficiently convincing that men carry about with them the seeds of disease; that while these attach themselves to the persons and clothing of those who introduce them into new climes, and flourish independently of cultivation, yet the exotics which they foster with so much care, often disappoint their most sanguine expectations ”

“ The undetected murderer, though he may escape the punishment human justice would inflict upon him for his delinquency, suffers a penalty in the tortures of conscience, infinitely more horrifying than the most ignominious death. The law of nature is triumphant. ”

“ We know that the fungi produce gangrene of the tissues, and disorganization of the blood; we know that their spores pervade the atmosphere, and are ready, under favouring conditions, to increase and multiply; we know that they are ubiquitous, and that those conditions most favourable to their development, are exactly such as are proved to foster and engender disease, and above all, they have been proved to be the elements of some diseases in man, in animals, and in plants. Can as much be said of any other known agents, animate or inanimate, comprised in our category? ”

“ But further; do those matters which engender disease furnish to our minds the properties inseparable from life in the abstract? Though the faculty of reproduction is essentially an evidence that the thing which reproduces its kind must be a living body, yet it is only a property or power of living beings and is not itself life, it therefore is necessary to establish the fact that the materies morbi not only has the power of reproduction, but also those properties which in the abstract will prove as far as demonstration can go, that it has the essential properties common to all living bodies. ”

“ Upon this fact alone, I would place the improbability of insects being the cause of epidemic disease. Each insect doubtless has its own peculiar food, and whether it be a vegetable or animal feeder, it consumes the matter already organized for conversion into its own tissue, and the only change which could be affected by them in the blood, would necessarily be that of appropriation of some one of the constituents as an element of food ”

“ There are grades and varieties of infectious diseases, from the most inveterate to the most mild and doubtful; but that all, without exception, which can in any way be traced to a specific generating and organic cause, may assume an exalted infectious character, and that the most inveterate, on the contrary, may more resemble the mild and doubtfully infectious forms, is a conviction that must be forced on all who pursue this enquiry with unbiassed interest. ”

“ Light, heat, moisture, and soil are therefore to be considered as the agents required to exist in a certain balance, or proportion, in reference to the health or power of vitality of the plant. Within a certain amount of variation, health may persist in virtue of the power of selection, which appertains to the spongioles of the root in absorbing nutriment; and also as regards light, from the tendency which most plants have to accommodate themselves to any deficiency of this element, by presenting their leafy expansion in that direction where the most of its influence may be obtained. ”

“ Geographical situation, together with certain vegetation, particularly of grounds which grow rice, is one remarkable for the production of endemic affections. But the soil which generates or gives force to the contaminating matter, is not alone the part where human beings feel its influence most severely. A low marshy ground, prolific of malaria, may be comparatively free; while some neighbouring elevated land, to which prevailing currents of air waft the volatile elements of disease, may be desolated by their virulent and concentrated action. ”

“ If the study of physiology, or an enquiry into the laws which regulate the functions of living beings in a state of health, has been materially aided by the intimate knowledge of vegetable physiology, which, from the simple structure of plants, so favours the experiments of the student, there is every reason to suppose that vegetable pathology may also lead us to an equally important and useful result. ”

“ At greater distances, these clouds being dispersed by the wind, became gradually attenuated yet their dispersion set no bounds to the pestilence, and it was as if they had imparted to the lower strata of the atmosphere, a kind of ferment which went on engendering itself even without the presence of the thick misty vapour, and being received into men's lungs, produced the frightful disease everywhere. ”

“ But how many centuries have passed away, each one succeeding the other, with its millions of victims to epidemics? And where are the remedies for the evils? Drainage and cleanliness, with all their advantages, were better understood and more fully carried out by the ancient {181}Romans than by ourselves; there are monuments, though crumbling to decay, to tell us of the vast enterprise of these people and of the value they set upon a healthy and vigorous constitution, and how well they understood the means of warding of disease. ”

“ And these observations apply with as much force to one disease as another; for even our indigenous ague, originating in some places so limited that the shadow of a passing cloud may mark the boundary of its dwelling place, as inscrutably evades our vigilance, with all the appliances that art can bring to our assistance, in endeavouring to evoke its extraordinary properties under the cognizance of our senses. ”

“ We may fairly then infer, that if a quantity of matter inappreciable in amount be sufficient to exhibit the characters of growth and increase, that it is endowed with the properties of vitality. That the poisons of scarlet fever, of measles, and of small-pox have this power of growth and increase, is as much a matter of universal belief as that "the sun {14}will rise and set to-morrow, and that all living beings will die."
This power of individual increase, or reproduction, is the very summit of vital manifestation ”

“ It has been inferred that the germs of disease possess the property of vitality, and a number of facts have been adduced to support the proposition that vitality is the indwelling force by which the matter generating epidemic and endemic disease exercises its influence over man and animals. The reasonableness of the application of these facts to the end in view has now to be considered. Chemistry cannot account for epidemics. ”

“ Is it yet explained why the town of Birmingham should be free from Cholera? There is a large manufacturing population, a great number of poor, the usual overcrowding of individuals in small chambers, a considerable amount of destitution and depravity; irregular habits of living, and unwholesome diet, and doubtless many parts of the town, which on investigation would have yielded all the elements usually considered necessary for the localization of the disease: but no—here was some repelling cause, some opposing agent to the generation and propagation of the pestilential seeds. ”

“ Extensive research is not required to shew that many thinking men believe in the existence of living organic beings, as the elements of contagious and epidemic diseases; the idea indeed seems to flow spontaneously in that direction. Whenever thought, and enduring contemplation, have been concentrated on the subject, the result appears to have been the same, a firm conviction in each individual mind that a vital force must be in operation ”

“ I have referred to the discovery of Suminski in {16}this place to recal to the mind the great and incomprehensible wonders of creation, for who could conceive it possible or feasible that even for the impregnation of an inferior vegetable, animal life should form an indispensable and essential appurtenant of the process. Truly may we say with Coleridge, of plants and insects, "so reciprocally inter-dependent and necessary are they to each other, that we can almost as little think of vegetation without insects, as of insects without vegetation." ”