This being the case, the methods of plant chemistry are of supreme interest, the more so because physiologists are in a position to isolate a single bacterial cell, grow it in certain media, and thus devote special attention to it, and keep it for some time under observation. In this way it has become possible to further grasp facts in connection with cell nutrition and the nature of its waste products. We have, then, arrived at a stage when the history of the chemical changes brought about by bacteria can be more definitely determined, as we have here to do with the vegetable cell in its simplest form. The chemical work performed by these micro-organisms has as yet occupied only a few years; nevertheless, the results have been of the most remarkable and encouraging character. At an earlier period an interesting discovery in connection with the pathogenic action of these bodies was, by the labours of Schöenlein, Robin, and others, brought to the notice of the medical profession, viz., that certain diseases affecting the human body were due to vegetable parasites. In 1856 an opportunity offered itself for a thorough investigation, and the microscopical part of the work fell into my hands, with the result that I was able to add considerably to Schöenlein’s list of parasitic skin diseases. My observations were in the first instance communicated to the medical journals. But the generalisation arrived at was that “If there be any exceptions to the law that parasites select for their sustenance the subjects of debility and decay, such exceptions are rarely to be found among the vegetations belonging to fungi, which invariably derive nutrition from matter in a state of lowered vitality, passing into degeneration, or wherein decomposition has already taken place to a certain extent.... It scarcely admits of a doubt that all diseases observed of late years among plants have been due to parasites of the same class favoured by want of vigour of growth and atmospheric conditions, and that the cause of the various murrains of which so much has been heard is also due to similar causes.”[50] Herein, then, is to be found the solution of a difficulty that so long surrounded the question, but which subsequently culminated in the specialisation and scientific development of bacteriology, due to the unceasing labours of Pasteur, whose solid genius enabled him to overcome the prejudices of those who were at work on other lines, and who had no conception of the functions that parasitic organisms fulfil in nature.