Henry Thoman. Leucocythæmia. Spleen 11 inches in diameter, two white globules to one red. German. Thirty-six years of age. Weight, 180 pounds. Colorless corpuscles very large and varying much in size, as seen at N. Corpuscles filled--many of them--with the spores of ague vegetation. Also spores swimming in serum.
This man has been a gardener back of Hoboken on ague lands, and has had ague for two years preceding this disease.
I will now introduce a communication made to me by a medical gentleman who has followed somewhat my researches for many years, and has taken great pains of time and expense to see if my researches are correct.
REPORT ON THE CAUSE OF AGUE.--BY DR. EPHRAIM CUTTER, TO THE WRITER
At your request I give the evidence on which I base my opinion that your plan in relation to ague is true.
From my very start into the medical profession, I had a natural intense interest in the causes of disease, which was also fostered by my father, the late Dr. Cutter, who honored his profession nearly forty years. Hence, I read your paper on ague with enthusiasm, and wrote to you for some of the plants of which you spoke. You sent me six boxes containing soil, which you said was full of the gemiasmas. You gave some drawings, so that I should know the plants when I saw them, and directed me to moisten the soil with water and expose to air and sunlight. In the course of a few days I was to proceed to collect. I faithfully followed the instructions, but without any success. I could detect no plants whatever,
This result would have settled the case ordinarily, and I would have said that you were mistaken, as the material submitted by yourself failed as evidence. But I thought that there was too much internal evidence of the truth of your story, and having been for many years an observer in natural history, I had learned that it is often very difficult for one to acquire the art of properly making examinations, even though the procedures are of the simplest description. So I distrusted, not you, but myself, and hence, you may remember, I forsook all and fled many hundred miles to you from my home with the boxes you had sent me. In three minutes after my arrival you showed me how to collect the plants in abundance from the very soil in the boxes that had traveled so far backward and forward, from the very specimens on which I had failed to do so.
The trouble was with me--that I went too deep with my needle. You showed me it was simply necessary to remove the slightest possible amount on the point of a cambric needle; deposit this in a drop of clean water on a slide cover with, a covering glass and put it under your elegant 1/5 inch objective, and there were the gemiasmas just as you had described.
I have always felt humbled by this teaching, and I at the time rejoiced that instead of denouncing you as a cheat and fraud (as some did at that time), I did not do anything as to the formation of an opinion until I had known more and more accurately about the subject.
I found all the varieties of the palmellæ you described in the boxes, and I kept them for several years and demonstrated them as I had opportunity. You also showed me on this visit the following experiments that I regarded as crucial: