Travers. — On Pathogenic Microbes. 55 



whooping-cough, influenza, measles, tetanus, yellow-fever, 

 dengue, actinomycosis, &c. ; while the fevers of the lower 

 animals are also bacterial in their origin. Many slight febrile 

 afl'ections usually denominated as " colds," although perhaps 

 occurring at the lieight of summer, are most probably due to 

 bacterial agency. Disease-bearing bacteria swarm around us, 

 seeking for bodies in a weakened condition into which to 

 enter, or awaiting their opportunity as saprophytes in moist, 

 dark, unwholesome places, where dead organic matter offers 

 them a resting-place. 



The discovery of pathogenic bacteria is destined to effect 

 changes which we cannot even now foresee in our quarantine 

 laws, in our public and domestic architecture, in our cookery, 

 in the quality of our animal food, in the breeds of our domestic 

 animals, in our intermarriages, in the disposal of our dead, 

 and in many other ways. Bacteriological Institutes are now 

 being established throughout Europe and America. Their 

 importance in relation to public health cannot be over- 

 estimated ; and in new colonies such as these of Australasia, 

 the question of State Bacteriological Institutes is well worthy 

 the consideration of Governments. It would seem that so 

 much is being discovered as to the causes of sickness and the 

 means of preventing it that disease must ultimately become 

 rare, and, indeed, it is true that many diseases are becoming 

 rare. But civilisation is a slow process. Disease in one class 

 of society may affect all classes ; disease in one family may 

 affect several families. Nothing but a widespread liberal 

 education, a socialism of knowledge, can ultimately eradicate 

 disease. 



Art. IV. — Remarks on Pathogenic Microbes, and the Means 

 of ^preventing Diseases originating in their Introduction 

 into the System. 



By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 4th December, 1889.] 



The investigations of Davaine, Pasteur, Koch, Cornil and 

 Babes, Duclaux, and others, have conclusively established that 

 many serious diseases which affect man and the most valuable 

 of his domestic animals, owe their origin to the introduction 

 into their bodies of minute vegetable organisms, now known 

 under the generic name of " microbes." So long ago as 1860 

 I ventured, in a letter addressed to Sir Joseph Hooker, to 

 suggest that certain symptoms in febrile diseases indicated the 



