546 OLD AGE. 



temperature than is necessary for mammals, yet they attain a greater 

 and more actiye ohl age than do mammals, even including man. 



Notwithstanding the great difference between the life of birds on 

 the one hand and that of turtles and crocodiles on tlie other, these 

 animals have this i:)oint in common, that in them the large intestine 

 is very slightly developed, if not absent, and their intestinal flora is 

 extremely scanty. 



In spite of the imperfect state of our knowledge at the present 

 time, the mass of facts we have cited may well justif}^ us in main- 

 taining the hypothesis that the intestinal microl^es play the part of 

 one of the preponderant causes of that chronic malady, our old age. 



Since science has already found very efficacious means both for 

 protecting the organism against infectious maladies and for curing 

 such maladies when they are not too far advanced, why should not 

 one seek for something to render old age less painful, it also being a 

 state which should be considered as having a microbic origin? 



If, as seems more and more probable, the source of our early decay 

 is found in our intestinal flora, we ought to seek some means either 

 for eliminating it more or less completely or for modifying it pro- 

 foundly. The idea of supj^ressing the large intestine, that useless 

 part of our digestive tube that we have inherited from our animal 

 progenitors and that serves as the principal reservoir for noxious 

 microbes, can not be considered seriously. It is evident that we can 

 not count upon the extirpation or even upon the surgical exclusion 

 of the large intestine. In the cases in which this operation becomes 

 unavoidable we find that the organism tends to form a second large 

 intestine. We ha^e under observation at the present time a young 

 woman in whom the suppression of the greater part of this organ, 

 made nearly a year ago, has by no means suppressed the disadvan- 

 tages due to intestinal microbes. It even seems that there is pro- 

 duced at the expense of the remaining portion of the large intestine 

 a pocket which collects the alimentary waste and nourishes a multi- 

 tude of microbes. ■ 



In the present state of our knowledge we are inclined rather to 

 consider the question of modifying our intestinal flora. There is 

 now present in it many injurious microbes. It is only necessary to 

 have some lesion in the intestinal wall that allows these to escape into 

 the peritoneum to set up an infectious disease of the gravest character. 



The microbes capable of inducing putrefaction are among the most 

 dangerous. Now, these microbes have bitter enemies in other mi- 

 crobes, especially in those that set up the fermentation of sugars and 

 produce lactic acid. Are there no means of acclimatizing such 

 microbes within our digestive tube in order to combat with their aid 

 intestinal putrefaction? 



Bacteriological researches have shown that many microbes, even 



