The profession have so long been entertained by the recital of exciting hunts after bacteria micrococci and other minute forms of life, that it may be a pleasant change to study a disease which has not yet been accused of harboring even a microbe. In this attempt to prove the germ theory, and seeking in it the cause of most pathological conditions, the tendency has been to overlook and slight the chemical origin of disease and the changes induced by faulty nutrition of the blood.

The symptoms to which an impoverished or perverted blood supply may give rise are more tangible problems than the old conundrums: "Is the chicken the cause of the first egg, or is the egg the cause of the chicken, or is the bacillus the cause of the disease or its result ?"

* Read before Buffalo Medical and Surgical Association.