32 



PROCEEDINGS 0¥ THE 



o£ which are too minute for our best microscopes to reveal to 

 the sense of sight. These pigmy, insignificant-seeming and 

 yet collectively formidable beings are everywhere at w^ork 

 — born in myriad numbers, propagating and expiring in a 

 brief season, "like May-FJies, e'er they hardly have begun to 

 live ; they infect or disinfect the air, alter the nature of the 

 soil, and cleanse or contaminate the w^ater. Entering our 

 systems through all of these facile mediums (w^e inhale on an 

 average about 2800 cubic feet of air through our lungs in the 

 short space of only twenty four hours and swallow- dust and 

 water in surprising quantities every day of our lives) they 

 soon obtain mastery over our weakened bodies and it is 

 surely their malefiant effects that we behold in the horrid 

 virulence of small-pox, the dreadful malignancy of cancer 

 and the melancholy ravages of consumption. Kings evil, 

 catarrh, malarial and scarlet fever, measles, the putrid sore 

 throat, gangrene, aye, dozens of other catching ails let loose 

 from a cursed Pandora's box among humankind, are simply 

 the direct or indirect results of these almost invisible atoms. 



" The drop of water we sip, the breath of air we breathe, 

 the particle of dust that finds insidious entrance to our bodies, 

 may be to us the unseen precursor of terrible disease, the 

 unheard knell of fateful doom, the silent forerunner of early, 

 torturing, ghastly death.'^ (pp. 24-25.) 



" May not soils owe their fertility or sterility, their 



adaptability or impracticability to the unseen workings of 

 these Genii of the Little-? May not water, also, derive many 

 of its properties, beneficial or injurious as they may happen 

 to be, from its teeming contents of microscopical life ? We 

 already know (from Bruce, the traveller.) that the natives of 

 far away Abyssinia ai-e infested with parasite Worms through 

 the agency of the water they drink — may not many diseases 

 of the guts originate from germs more minute than these 

 pernicious Larvse?''^ (p. 35.) 



vii. Spontaneous generation. 



" I have repeated most of these interesting experiments 

 [of Spallanzani and Schwann] and in addition to these have 

 made many more of my own devising 



''From them I find that Schwann is, in the main, correct ; 

 but further note that the close sealing he has recourse to is 

 unnecessary, merely stuffing the mouth of the containing 

 vessel with cotton wool will answer the same purpose ; that 

 of a germ barrier, as the most elaborate sealing if the heated 

 wool is held in a forceps. 



