Bacteria in Daily Life. Frankland Grace C.

and were then isolated lived for several days afterwards, during which time virulent plague bacilli were present in their bodies in immense numbers; thus were these insects converted into winged messengers of evil of the most repulsive type.

      I am not aware whether any experiments on the vitality and transmissibility of diphtheria and consumption germs by means of flies have been made; but in view of the overwhelming evidence of the culpability of these insects in spreading plague, it is not unreasonable to presume a responsibility on their behalf in regard to other diseases; indeed, in the report issued by the Army Medical Commissioners of the Spanish-American War, it is emphatically stated that flies played an important part in the dissemination of typhoid fever.

      There is no question as to the capability of certain micro-organisms to reside for considerable periods of time within the bodies of flies, and during this sojourn to abate no jot of their virulence. Indeed, it has been shown that the bodies of these insects may constitute incubators of a most successful type, for some varieties of bacteria grow luxuriantly and multiply abundantly within them.

      In the hot days of summer, when flies abound, it would be well to banish these insects, as far as lies in our power, not only from our sick-rooms in particular, but from our general surroundings. The catholic taste of flies for garbage of all kinds is too well known to require entering into, but the consequences which may follow from their visits to dustbins and centres of disease, and then alighting upon our food or persons, has received too little attention in the past.

      In regard to the subject of insects as disease disseminators, it may be mentioned that Mr. Hankin, when studying plague conditions in India, expressed his belief that ants in Bombay also assisted in spreading the scourge, for he found that when he inoculated mice with the excreta of ants, such insects having previously fed on plague-stricken rats, the mice succumbed to plague in a few hours. Fleas have also been conclusively proved to be carriers of plague germs.

      There is no doubt that the revelations of hygienic science have aroused the vigilance and zeal of public authorities in various new directions to try and cope with the spread of zymotic disease.

      In no direction, perhaps, is the fruit of this energy so apparent as in the increasing supervision which it has incited over two of the greatest menaces to public health which hang over society —i. e. our water and dairy supplies. Now that it has been proven beyond doubt that the germs of consumption, typhoid fever, and cholera can be and are distributed through the consumption of contaminated milk or water, not to mention other diseases such as diphtheria and scarlet fever, an ever-increasing demand is being made that these all-important articles of diet shall be protected from pollution, and that public authorities shall be made responsible for their distribution in a pure and wholesome condition.

      It is, however, undoubtedly in the matter of water that the greatest service has been rendered by bacteriology to sanitary science, and for the important advance in this department we are indebted to the beautifully simple and ingenious methods devised by Robert Koch.

      Not yet twenty years have passed since the new bacterial examination of water was introduced and systematically employed, and the use which has been made of the opportunities thus opened up of investigating water problems on an entirely new basis is shown by the voluminous dimensions which the literature on this one branch of bacteriology alone has reached. Considerably upwards of two hundred different water bacteria have been isolated, studied, and their distinctive characters chronicled. The behaviour of typhoid, cholera, and other disease-producing microbes in waters of various kinds has been made the subject of exhaustive experiments; the purification power of time-honoured processes in operation at waterworks and elsewhere has been for the first time accurately estimated. Water engineers have through these bacteriological researches been provided with a code of conduct drawn up by the light of erudite scientific inquiries, which has now rendered possible the removal of the process of water purification from the rule of empiricism guided by tradition, and to raise it to the level of an intelligent and scientific undertaking.

      The above short sketch may serve to convey some idea of the rise and phenomenal development of bacteriology during the past sixty years. To record, even in outline, the individual triumphs of the various branches of this science would require volumes, whilst the astounding mass of work already accumulated by its devotees is but the earnest, the guarantee of yet greater achievements in the future.

      The progress which has been made in this brief period of time must not necessarily be expected to continue at this rapid rate; it may be that generations to come have yet the hardest and the longest tasks to accomplish; for in science, as in other walks of life, it is, as a rule, the easiest problems, which are first disposed of, and the farther we advance the more complicated, the more intricate become the questions to be attacked, the difficulties to be overcome.

      The late Queen's reign has bestowed a splendid legacy of bacteriological discoveries upon those who, in the future as in the present, must inevitably follow in the footsteps of those great and brilliant leaders of bacteriological science belonging to this auspicious era, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.

      WHAT WE BREATHE

      Few people realise that, with the advent of autumn, the great majority of the swarms of bacteria which have been circulating in the air during the hot summer months take their leave of us and disappear.

      Practically, however, we are all conscious of this fact, for we know what greater difficulties attend the keeping of food sweet and wholesome in the summer than are met with in the winter; bacteria, not unlike some other armies of occupation, securing a footing rather by their numbers at this season of the year, than by virtue of the superior strategy or, in other words, special attributes of their units. Bacterial operations are, however, distinctly favoured by the accident of temperature, the warmth of the summer encouraging their vitality and multiplication.

      When Pasteur first announced his conviction that the familiar phenomena of putrefaction and decay were due to minute living particles present in our surroundings, his sceptical critics sought to ridicule his conclusions by declaring that, were this the case, the air must of necessity be so heavily laden with living forms that we should be surrounded by a thick fog – "dense comme du fer." We do not now, forty years later, require to recite the exquisitely simple experiments which, whilst sufficiently establishing his theories, served to effectually suppress those of his opponents.

      Since Pasteur's pioneering work was carried out, a vast number of investigations have been made in all parts of the world by scientists of almost every nationality on the subject of the distribution of bacteria in air, and not only on their distribution, but on their functions or the place they occupy in the economy of nature. With our increased knowledge concerning their distribution has come our ability to differentiate between individuals, and to adequately assess the value and importance of their work from various points of view.

      In the bacterial treatment of sewage we have not only one of the latest, but perhaps also one of the most successful examples of that system of division of labour, or specialisation of energy, which forms such a characteristic feature of work of all kinds at the present time. Other familiar instances of the applications of individual and special bacterial labourers to the solution of industrial problems are to be found in the conduct of commercial undertakings of such national magnitude and importance as brewing and agriculture. But it is not with these beneficent or great industrial classes of bacteria that we are now more immediately concerned, but rather with the malevolent varieties, or the so-called "submerged tenth," for which no labour colony has at present been created to direct their energies into useful and profitable channels.

      We know that as regards mere numbers the bacteria in air may vary from 0 to millions in a couple of gallons, these extremes being dependent upon the surrounding conditions or relative purity of the atmosphere.

      Out at sea, beyond the reach of land breezes, it is no uncommon thing to find none whatever; on mountains and even hills of humble elevation the paucity of bacteria is very marked if there are no abnormal or untoward circumstances contributing to their distribution. In illustration of this the recent investigations of the air on the summit of Mont Blanc by M. Jean Binot are of especial interest, inasmuch as the altitude at which they were carried out is the highest at which the search after bacteria has so far been pursued. This intrepid investigator