Bacteria in Daily Life. Frankland Grace C.

other maladies, and for the development of which we owe so much to the labours of Behring, Roux, Kitasato, and other investigators.

      The astounding fact that the blood of animals which have been trained to artificially withstand a particular disease becomes endowed with the power of protecting other animals from that disease is only in the earliest stages of its application. The results, however, which have already been accomplished are of so encouraging a character that the hope is justified that serum-therapy is destined to revolutionise the treatment of disease. One of the latest uses which has been made of this method of combating disease is the employment of serum for the cure of bubonic plague. During the recent outbreak of plague in India, Yersin, formerly a student and assistant at the Paris Pasteur Institute, was despatched to India to superintend the administration of this new remedy, and the serum he employed was that derived from horses which had been subjected to, and had recovered from, inoculations with the plague bacillus. The treatment of snake bites by means of curative serum will be dealt with in more detail later on; it only remains to cite it here as another instance of the success which is attending the new methods of protection against disease.

      Another and highly ingenious application of serum has been brought forward by Pfeiffer, Gruber, Widal, and others. This is the so-called sero-diagnosis of disease, and has been employed already with success in the identification of typhoid fever as such. The method sounds simple in the extreme, and consists in taking a few drops of blood from a patient supposed to be suffering from typhoid fever and mixing them with a recent cultivation in broth of genuine typhoid bacilli. If the blood is derived from a typhoid-infected person, then the bacilli should exhibit a curious and characteristic appearance when examined under the microscope. Instead of moving about as individuals in various parts of the microscopic field, they should be seen gathering or clumping together in numerous small heaps, their movements the while becoming paralysed.

      The State Board of Health of Massachusetts has recently taken up the official sero-diagnosis of typhoid fever, and issues in response to applications a simple outfit with instructions how to collect specimens of blood and a form which they request shall be returned filled in with all the details concerning the case under observation. Only a few drops of blood are required for the examination, and these before being despatched to the State Laboratory are collected on slips of paper and allowed to dry. If the addition of this suspected blood in the proportion of one to twenty to a young and vigorous culture of typhoid bacilli succeeds in paralysing their movements, producing the characteristic clumping together or agglutination of the bacilli, then the reaction is considered positive and the case one of typhoid fever.

      That, however, some risk attends the placing of too implicit a reliance on this method of diagnosis alone is evident from the fact that a negative reaction, or in other words, absence of all agglutinising phenomena, is sometimes associated with blood throughout what is beyond all question a well-defined case of typhoid fever, whilst in the first week of this disease the test is frequently negative in character. Rouget, who has made a very careful inquiry into the value to be attached to the sero-diagnosis of typhoid fever, states that he has found in a large number of examinations of blood derived from undoubted typhoid patients the agglutination phenomena fail altogether; it is, therefore, not surprising that the sero-diagnosis of this disease is still the subject of much discussion and investigation.

      An interesting example of how particular serums may be employed for the detection of particular poisons has been furnished by Dr. Calmette. In some districts of India the natives have an ugly custom of wreaking their vengeance on their enemies by poisoning their cattle, and to effect this both expeditiously and secretly they employ subtle poisons which they know can only be detected with great difficulty. Serpent venom is a favourite substance, whilst abrine, a highly toxic vegetable poison, is another. The method adopted for the application of this abrine is highly original, and consists in taking small bits of wood shaped like miniature clubs, so diminutive in size that they can be concealed in the hand. In the head of the club small holes are bored, and tiny pointed rodlets of a hard greyish substance are fitted into them. Armed with these crude instruments, the natives scratch the cattle in several places, and, although but little external sign of injury is to be seen, the rod-points penetrate the skin and are broken off, and the poison is left to work its lethal way through the animals' system. Mr. Hankin forwarded some of these broken-off rod-points to Dr. Calmette for the identification of their composition, and he diagnosed the material employed as abrine in the following original manner. He first introduced some of this rod material into animals, and found that their symptoms were suggestive of abrine poisoning. To confirm his suspicions, however, he took some more of this rod material, and, before inoculating it into animals, he mixed it with serum derived from animals which had been artificially rendered immune to abrine poison. Instead of the animals into which this mixture of serum and "rod material" had been introduced dying like the previous ones, they remained alive. Had the "rod material" consisted of some poison other than abrine, the abrine serum would not, according to Dr. Calmette, have negatived its action, and it has thus been indicated how protective serums may be successfully employed for the detection of poisons.

      Foremost, however, among the beneficent reforms which have followed in the wake of bacteriology must be placed the antiseptic treatment of wounds, or Listerism, as it is now universally designated in recognition of its renowned champion, the former President of the Royal Society. "Lister comprend," in the words of Dr. Roux, "que les complications des plaies sont dues aux germes microbiens venus du dehors et il imagine les pansements antiseptiques. Avec l'antiseptie commencent les temps nouveaux de la chirurgie." It only remains to add that, with the modesty characteristic of a great man, its brilliant author delights in repeating how any good which he may have been permitted to do he owes entirely to the inspiration which he received from the labours of Louis Pasteur.

      But if the Victorian era has been productive of so many important applications of bacteriology to commerce and medicine, this period has been also fraught with results of the highest moment in the progress of hygiene.

      The terms of intimacy, so to speak, which we have been now able to establish with bacteria has enabled us to discover details of their life and habits which before were shrouded in mystery. Their distribution in air has led to renewed endeavours on the part of sanitary authorities to procure efficient ventilation in our hospitals and public institutions; dust has acquired a fresh horror since it has been shown how disease germs may be disseminated by its means; whilst the important part which flies and lice may play in the spread of epidemics has opened up a new field for research, and made us conscious of a fresh source of danger in our daily life.

      The general public, however, is hardly yet fully alive to the capacity for mischief possessed and exercised by the common house-fly. True, it is universally execrated and regarded as a tiresome attendant upon the summer months, but it is not usually considered in any more serious light. That however, the comparative indulgence with which this homely insect pest has been treated is decidedly misplaced and fraught with danger to health, the researches of numerous scientists have now conclusively proved.

      As long ago as the year 1888 Professor Celli showed that the germs of consumption, anthrax, and typhoid fever could pass through the digestive organs of flies and reappear in the excreta of the latter not only alive but in full possession of their disease-producing powers. Dr. Sawtschenko made similar experiments with cholera germs. Healthy flies were placed under glass shades and fed with broth in which these micro-organisms were growing, and the latter were not only subsequently recovered from the digestive organs of the flies but also from their excreta in a living and virulent condition.

      This is, however, not the only means whereby these insects can distribute deadly and other microbes, for it has been shown that in crawling over substances containing bacteria these may become attached to the feet of flies, and are in this manner transferred to other materials upon which they may alight, just as Pasteur showed many years earlier silkworms can communicate the fatal plague of pébrine by crawling over each other's bodies, carrying in their disease-laden feet the infection from one worm to another. During the recent outbreak of bubonic plague in the East the part played by flies in disseminating the virus has been repeatedly emphasised. Yersin was the first who called attention to the presence in large numbers of virulent plague bacilli within the bodies of flies which he collected in the vicinity of plague-stricken persons, and it was found that flies which had fed on plague-infected