Chapter 8

1. Acineta tuberosa. 2. Actinophrys sol. 3. Amoeba proteus. 4. " radiosa. 5. " verrucosa. 6. Anabaina subtularia. 7. Ankistrodesmus falcatus. 8. Anurea longispinis. 9. " monostylus. 10. Anguillula fluviatilis. 11. Arcella mitrata. 12. " vulgaris. 13. Argulus. 14. Arthrodesmus convergens. 15. Arthrodesmus divergens. 16. Astrionella formosa. 17. Bacteria. 18. Bosmina. 19. Botryiococcus. 20. Branchippus stagnalis. 21. Castor. 22. Centropyxis. 23. Chetochilis. 24. Chilomonads. 25. Chlorococcus. 26. Chydorus. 27. Chytridium. 28. Clatbrocystis æruginosa. 29. Closterium lunula. 30. " didymotocum. 31. " moniliferum. 32. Coelastrum sphericum. 33. Cosmarium binoculatum. 34. Cyclops quad. 35. Cyphroderia amp. 36. Cypris tristriata. 37. Daphnia pulex. 38. Diaptomas castor. 39. " sull. 40. Diatoma vulgaris. 41. Difflugia cratera. 42. " globosa. 43. Dinobryina sertularia. 44. Dinocharis pocillum. 45. Dirt. 46. Eggs of polyp. 47. " entomostraca. 48. " plumatella. 49. " bryozoa. 50. Enchylis pupa. 51. Eosphora aurita. 52. Epithelia, animal. 53. " vegetable. 54. Euastrum. 55. Euglenia viridis. 56. Euglypha. 57. Eurycercus lamellatus. 58. Exuvia of some insect. 59. Feather barbs. 60. Floscularia. 61. Feathers of butterfly. 62. Fungu, red water. 63. Fragillaria. 64. Gemiasma verdans. 65. Gomphospheria. 66. Gonium. 67. Gromia. 68. Humus. 69. Hyalosphenia tinctad. 70. Hydra viridis. 71. Leptothrix. 72. Melosira. 73. Meresmopedia. 74. Monactina. 75. Monads. 76. Naviculæ. 77. Nitzschia. 78. Nostoc communis. 79. OEdogonium. 80. Oscillatoriaceæ. 81. Ovaries of entomostraca. 82. Pandorina morum. 83. Paramecium aurelium. 84. Pediastrum boryanum. 85. " incisum. 86. " perforatum. 87. " pertusum. 88. " quadratum. 89. Pelomyxa. 90. Penium. 91. Peredinium candelabrum. 92. Peredinium cinc. 93. Pleurosigma angulatum. 94. Plumatella. 95. Plagiophrys. 96. Playtiptera polyarthra. 97. Polycoccus. 98. Pollen of pine. 99. Polyhedra tetraëtzica. 100. " triangularis. 101. Polyphema. 102. Protococcus. 103. Radiophrys alba. 104. Raphidium duplex. 105. Rotifer ascus. 106. " vulgaris. 107. Silica. 108. Saprolegnia. 109. Scenedesmus acutus. 110. " obliquus. 111. " obtusum. 112. " quadricauda. 113. Sheath of tubelaria. 114. Sphærotheca spores. 115. Spirogyra. 116. Spicules of sponge. 117. Starch. 118. Staurastrum furcigerum. 119. " gracile. 120. Staurogenum quadratum. 121. Surirella. 122. Synchoeta. 123. Synhedra. 124. Tabellaria. 125. Tetraspore. 126. Trachelomonas. 127. Trichodiscus. 128. Uvella. 129. Volvox globator. 130. " sull. 131. Vorticel. 132. Worm fluke. 133. Worm, two tailed. 134. Yeast.

More forms were found, but could not be determined by me. This list will give an idea of the variety of forms to be met with in the hunt for ague plants; still, they are as well marked in their physical characters as a potato is among the objects of nature. Although I know you are perfectly familiar with algæ, still, to make my report more complete, in case you should see fit to have it pass out of your hands to others, allow me to give a short account of the Order Three of Algæ, namely, the Chlorosporeæ or Confervoid Algæ, derived from the Micrographic Dictionary, this being an accessible authority.

Algae form a class of the thallophytes or cellular plants in which the physiological functions of the plant are delegated most completely to the individual cell. That is to say, the marked difference of purpose seen in the leaves, stamens, seeds, etc., of the phanerogams or flowering plants is absent here, and the structures carrying on the operations of nutrition and those of reproduction are so commingled, conjoined, and in some cases identified, that a knowledge of the microscopic anatomy is indispensable even to the roughest conception of the natural history of these plants; besides, we find these plants so simple that we can see through and through them while living in a natural condition, and by means of the microscope penetrate to mysteries of organism, either altogether inaccessible, or only to be attained by disturbing and destructive dissection, in the so called higher forms of vegetation. We say "so-called" advisedly, for in the Algæ are included the largest forms of plant life.

The Macrocystis pyrifera, an Algæ, is the largest of all known plants. It is a sea weed that floats free and unattached in the ocean. Covers the area of two square miles, and is 300 feet in depth (Reinsch). At the same time its structure on examination shows it to belong to the same class of plants as the minute palmellæ which we have been studying. Algæ are found everywhere in streams, ditches, ponds, even the smallest accumulations of water standing for any time in the open air, and commonly on walls or the ground, in all permanently damp situations. They are peculiarly interesting in regard to morphological conditions alone, as their great variety of conditions of organization are all variations, as it were, on the theme of the simple vegetable cell produced by change of form, number, and arrangement.

The Algæ comprehend a vast variety of plants, exhibiting a wonderful multiplicity of forms, colors, sizes, and degrees of complexity of structure, but algologists consider them to belong to three orders: 1. Red spored Algæ, called Rhodosporeæ or florideæ. 2. The dark or black spored Algæ, or Melanosporeæ or Fucoideæ. 3. The green spored Algæ, or Chlorosporeæ or Confervoideæ. The first two classes embrace the sea-weeds. The third class, marine and aquatic plants, most of which when viewed singly are microscopic. Of course some naturalists do not agree to these views. It is with order three, Confervoideæ, that we are interested. These are plants growing in sea or fresh water, or on damp surfaces, with a filamentous, or more rarely a leaf-like pulverulent or gelatinous thallus; the last two forms essentially microscopic. Consisting frequently of definitely arranged groups of distinct cells, either of ordinary structure or with their membrane silicified--Diatomaceæ. We note three forms of fructification: 1. Resting spores produced after fertilization either by conjugation or impregnation. 2. Spermatozoids. 3. Zeospores; 2, 4, or multiciliated active automobile cells--gonidia--discharged from the mother cells or plants without impregnation, and germinating directly. There is also another increase by cell division.

SYNOPSIS OF THE FAMILIES.

1. _Lemaneæ_.--Frond filamentous, inarticulate, cartilaginous, leathery, hollow, furnished at irregular distances with whorls or warts, or necklace shaped. Fructification: tufted, simple or branched, necklace shaped filaments attached to the inner surface of the tubular frond, and finally breaking up into elliptical spores. Aquatic.

2. _Batrachospermeæ_--Plants filamentous, articulated, invested with gelatine. Frond composed of aggregated, articulated, longitudinal cells, whorled at intervals with short, horizontal, cylindrical or beaded, jointed ramuli. Fructification: ovate spores and tufts of antheridial cells attached to the lateral ramuli, which consist of minute, radiating, dichotomous beaded filaments. Aquatic.

3. _Chaetophoraceæ_.--Plants growing in the sea or fresh water, coated by gelatinous substance; either filiform or a number of filaments being connected together constituting gelatinous, definitely formed, or shapeless fronds or masses. Filaments jointed, bearing bristle-like processes. Fructification: zoospores produced from the cell contents of the filaments; resting spores formed from the contents of particular cells after impregnation by ciliated spermatozoids produced in distinct antheridial cells. Coleochætæ.

4. _Confervaceæ_.--Plants growing in the sea or in fresh water, filamentous, jointed, without evident gelatine (forming merely a delicate coat around the separate filaments) Filaments very variable in appearance, simple or branched; the cells constituting the articulations of the filaments more or less filled with green, or very rarely brown or purple granular matter; sometimes arranged in peculiar patterns on the walls, and convertible into spores or zoospores. Not conjugating.

5. _Zygnemaceæ_.--Aquatic filamentous plants, without evident gelatine, composed of series of cylindrical cells, straight or curved. Cell contents often arranged in elegant patterns on the walls. Reproduction resulting from conjugation, followed by the development of a true spore, in some genera dividing into four sporules before germinating.

6. _OEdogoniaceæ_.--Simple or branched aquatic filamentous plants attached without gelatine. Cell contents uniform, dense, cell division accompanied by circumscissile debiscence of the parent cell, producing rings on the filaments. Reproduction by zoospores formed of the whole contents of a cell, with a crown of numerous cilia; resting spores formed in sporangial cells after fecundation by ciliated spermatozoids formed in antheridial cells.

7. _Siphonaceæ_--Plants found in the sea, fresh water, or on damp ground; of a membranous or horny byaline substance, filled with green or colorless granular matter. Fronds consisting of continuous tubular filaments, either free or collected into spongy masses of various shapes. Crustaceous, globular, cylindrical, or flat. Fructification: by zoospores, either single or very numerous, and by resting spores formed in sporangial cells after the contents have been impregnated by the contents of autheridial cells of different forms.

8 _Oscillatoriaceæ_.--Plants growing either in the sea, fresh water, or on damp ground, of a gelatinous substance and filamentous structure. Filaments very slender, tubular, continuous, filled with colored, granular, transversely striated substance; seldom blanched, though often cohering together so as to appear branched; usually massed together in broad floating or sessile strata, of a very gelatinous nature; occasionally erect and tufted, and still more rarely collected into radiating series bound together by firm gelatine and then forming globose lobed or flat crustaceous fronds. Fructification: the internal mass or contents separating into roundish or lenticular gonidia.

9. _Nostochacæ_.--Gelatinous plants growing in fresh water, or in damp situations among mosses, etc.; of soft or almost leathery substance, consisting of variously curled or twisted necklace-shaped filaments, colorless or green, composed of simple, or in some stages double rows of cells, contained in a gelatinous matrix of definite form, or heaped together without order in a gelatinous mass. Some of the cells enlarged, and then forming either vesicular empty cells or densely filled sporangial cells. Reproduction: by the breaking up of the filaments, and by resting spores formed singly in the sporanges.

10. _Ulvaceæ_.--Marine or aquatic algae consisting of membranous, flat, and expanded tubular or saccate fronds composed of polygonal cells firmly joined together by their sides.

Reproduced by zoospores formed from the cell contents and breaking out from the surface, or by motionless spores formed from the whole contents.

11. _Palmellaceæ_.--Plants forming gelatinous or pulverulent crusts on damp surfaces of stone, wood, earth, mud, swampy districts, or more or less regular masses of gelatinous substance or delicate pseudo-membranous expansion or fronds, of flat, globular, or tubular form, in fresh water or on damp ground; composed of one or many, sometimes innumerable, cells, with green, red, or yellowish contents, spherical or elliptical form, the simplest being isolated cells found in groups of two, four, eight, etc., in course of multiplication. Others permanently formed of some multiple of four; the highest forms made up of compact, numerous, more or less closely joined cells. Reproduction: by cell division, by the conversion of the cell contents into zoospores, and by resting spores, formed sometimes after conjugation; in other cases, probably, by fecundation by spermatozoids. All the unicellular algæ are included under this head.

12. _Desmidiaceæ_.--Microscopic gelatinous plants, of a screen color, growing in fresh water, composed of cells devoid of a silicious coat, of peculiar forms such as oval, crescentic, shortly cylindrical, cylindrical, oblong, etc., with variously formed rays or lobes, giving a more or less stellate form, presenting a bilateral symmetry, the junction of the halves being marked by a division of the green contents; the individual cells being free, or arranged in linear series, collected into fagot-like bundles or in elegant star like groups which are embedded in a common gelatinous coat. Reproduced by division and by resting spores produced in sporangia formed after the conjugation of two cells and union of their contents, and by zoospores formed in the vegetative cells or in the germinating resting spores.

13. _Diatomaceæ_.--Microscopic cellular bodies, growing in fresh, brackish, and sea water: free or attached, single, or embedded in gelatinous tubes, the individual cells (frustules) with yellowish or brown contents, and provided with a silicious coat composed of two usually symmetrical valves variously marked, with a connecting band or hoop at the suture. Multiplied by division and by the formation of new larger individuals out of the contents of individual conjugated cells; perhaps also by spores and zoospores.

14. _Volvocineæ_.--Microscopic cellular fresh water plants, composed of groups of bodies resembling zoospores connected into a definite form by their enveloping membranes. The families are formed either of assemblages of coated zoospores united in a definite form by the cohesion of their membranes, or assemblages of naked zoospores inclosed in a common investing membrane. The individual zoospore-like bodies, with two cilia throughout life, perforating the membranous coats, and by their conjoined action causing a free co-operative movement of the whole group. Reproduction by division, or by single cells being converted into new families; and by resting spores formed from some of the cells after impregnation by spermatozoids formed from the contents of other cells of the same family.

From the description I think you have placed your plants in the right family. And evidently they come in the genera named, but at present there is in the authorities at my command so much confusion as to the genera, as given by the most eminent authorities, like Nageli, Kutzing, Braun Rabenht, Cohn, etc., that I think it would be quite unwise for me to settle here, or try to settle here, questions that baffle the naturalists who are entirely devoted to this specialty. We can safely leave this to them. Meantime let us look at the matter as physicians who desire the practical advantages of the discovery you have made. To illustrate this position let us take a familiar case. A boy going through the fields picks and eats an inedible mushroom. He is poisoned and dies. Now, what is the important part of history here from a physician's point of view? Is it not that the mushroom poisoned the child? Next comes the nomenclature. What kind of agaricus was it? Or was it one of the gasteromycetes, the coniomycetes, the hyphomycetes, the ascomycetes, or one of the physomycetes? Suppose that the fungologists are at swords' points with each other about the name of the particular fungus that killed the boy? Would the physicians feel justified to sit down and wait till the whole crowd of naturalists were satisfied, and the true name had been settled satisfactorily to all? I trow not; they would warn the family about eating any more; and if the case had not yet perished, they would let the nomenclature go and try all the means that history, research, and instructed common sense would suggest for the recovery.

This leads me here to say that physicians trust too much to the simple dicta of men who may be very eminent in some department of natural history, and yet ignorant in the very department about which, being called upon, they have given an opinion. All everywhere have so much to learn that we should be very careful how we reject new truths, especially when they come from one of our number educated in our own medical schools, studied under our own masters. If the subject is one about which we know nothing, we had better say so when asked our opinion, and we should receive with respect what is respectfully offered by a man whom we know to be honest, a hard worker, eminent in his department by long and tedious labors. If he asks us to look over his evidence, do so in a kindly spirit, and not open the denunciations of bar room vocabularies upon the presenter, simply because we don't see his point. In other words, we should all be receptive, but careful in our assimilation, remembering that some of the great operations in surgery, for example, came from laymen in low life, as the operation for stone, and even the operation of spaying came from a swineherd.

It is my desire, however, to have this settled as far as can be among scientists, but for the practical uses of practicing physicians I say that far more evidence has been adduced by you in support of the cause of intermittent fever than we have in the etiology of many other diseases. I take the position that so long as no one presents a better history of the etiology of intermittent fever by facts and observations, your theory must stand. This, too, notwithstanding what may be said to the contrary.

Certainly you are to be commended for having done as you have in this matter. It is one of the great rights of the profession, and duties also, that if a physician has or thinks he has anything that is new and valuable, to communicate it, and so long as he observes the rules of good society the profession are to give him a respectful hearing, even though he may have made a mistake. I do not think you had a fair hearing, and hence so far as I myself am concerned I indorse your position, and shall do so till some one comes along and gives a better demonstration. Allow me also to proceed with more evidence.

Observation at West Falmouth, Mass., Sept 1, 1877. I made five observations in like manner about the marshes and bogs of this town, which is, as it were, situated on the tendo achillis of Cape Cod, Mass. In only one of these observations did I find any palmellæ like the ague plants, and they were not characteristic.

Chelsea, Mass., near the Naval Hospital, September 5, 1877. Three sets of observations. In all spores were found and some sporangia, but they were not the genuine plants as far as I could judge. They were Protococcaceæ. It is not necessary to add that there are no cases of intermittent fever regarded as originating on the localities named. Still, the ancient history of New England contains some accounts of ague occurring there, but they are not regarded as entirely authentic.

Observation. Lexington, Mass, September 6, 1877. Observation made in a meadow. There was no saline incrustation, and no palmellæ found. No local malaria.

Observation. Cambridge, Mass. Water works on the shore of Fresh Pond. Found a few palmellæ analogous to, but not the ague palmellæ.

Observation. Woburn, Mass, September 27, 1877, with Dr. J. M. Moore. Found some palmellæ, but scanty. Abundance of spores of cryptogams.

Observation. Stonington, Conn., August 15, 1877. Examined a pond hole nearly opposite the railroad station on the New York Shore Line. Found abundantly the white incrustation on the surface of the soil. Here I found the spores and the sporangias of the gemiasmas verdans and rubra.

Observation 2. Repetition of the last.

Observation 3. I examined some of an incrustation that was copiously deposited in the same locality, which was not white or frosty, but dark brown and a dirty green. Here the spores were very abundant, and a few sporangias of the Gemiasma rubra. Ague has of late years been noted in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Observations in Connecticut. Middlefield near Middletown, summer of 1878. Being in this locality, I heard that intermittent fever was advancing eastward at the rate of ten miles a year. It had been observed in Middlefield. I was much interested to see if I could find the gemiasmas there. On examining the dripping of some bog moss, I found a plenty of them.

Observations in Connecticut. New Haven. Early in the summer of 1881 I visited this city. One object of my visit was to ascertain the truth of the presence of intermittent fever there, which I had understood prevailed to such an extent that my patient, a consumptive, was afraid to return to his home in New Haven. At this time I examined the hydrant water of the city water works, and also the east shore of the West River, which seemed to be too full of sewage. I found a plenty of the Oscillatoreaceæ, but no Palmellæ.

In September I revisited the city, taking with me a medical gentleman who, residing in the South, had had a larger experience with the disease than I. From the macroscopical examination he pronounced a case we examined to be ague, but I was not able to detect the plants either in the urine or blood. This might have been that I did not examine long enough. But a little later I revisited the city and explored the soil about the Whitney Water Works, whence the city gets its supply of water, and I had no difficulty in finding a good many of the plants you describe as found by you in ague cases. At a still later period my patient, whom I had set to use the microscope and instructed how to collect the ague plants, set to work himself. One day his mother brought in a film from off an ash pile that lay in the shade, and this her son found was made up of an abundance of the ague plants. By simply winding a wet bandage around the slide, Mr. A. was enabled to keep the plants in good condition until the time of my next visit, when I examined and pronounced them to be genuine plants.

I should here remark that I had in examining the sputa of this patient sent to me, found some of the ague plants. He said that he had been riding near the Whitney Pond, and perceived a different odor, and thought he must have inhaled the miasm. I told him he was correct in his supposition, as no one could mistake the plants; indeed, Prof. Nunn, of Savannah, Ga., my pupil recognized it at once.