74 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



not be clone by a novice. I am greatly inclined to believe that many species have 

 been described, as was true in many cases, of early systematic efforts with higher 

 plants, without looking up the literature or carefully comparing specimens. It is 

 out of the question in smaller institutions where library facilities are so meager 

 that they should have access to much of the literature, and this is especially true 

 where many of the species are described in out of the way journals. It seems to 

 me that it would be expedient to describe species only in well recognized journals 

 devoted to this line of work like Zeitschrift fur Hygiene, Centralblatt fur Bakte- 

 riologie und Parasitenkunde. The Botanical Gazette, Bulletin of the Torrey 

 Botanical Club, or possibly the American Monthly Microscopical Journal might 

 undertake to do this line of work on this side of the Atlantic. 



BACTERIA AND THEIR RELATION TO THE DISEASES IN MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS. 



The subject of Bacteriology has become so important in modern medicine that 

 no physician can claim recognition as an authority in zymotic diseases unless he 

 treats it from the standpoint of the modern advancement in this the newest of 

 sciences. The author who ignores the facts of bacteriology can no longer find place 

 as an authority in the library of a physician. Facts are being established however, 

 so rapidly that even the best of works soon become obsolete. 



Dr. Baumgarten says^^: "In a study of diseases, the aetiology must not be 



considered by itself, when in this case we are dealing with organic beings , 



bacteria and animal life, which bear certain relations to each other, the success in 

 treatment cannot be controlled by a single factor." 



Patrick Geddes''^, in that most charming of books. Chapters in Modern Botany, 

 says: "Most important, however, is the fact expressed in the germ theory that 

 bacteria are constantly and intimately associated with some of the most fatal of 

 human diseases, such as consumption, diphtheria, small pox, or typhoid, malaria or 

 leprosy. Bacteria, in fact, will kill most of us." 



DeBary35 gays: " It is not necessary to .enlarge upon the manifold interest 

 attached to these organisms at a time when the statement urged daily on the 

 educated public does not fall short of saying, that a large part of all health and 

 disease in the world is dependent on bacteria." 



So long as the old ways of looking at the nr ture of contagious diseases was in 

 vogue, little could be expected, since it was before the advent of the cotton air 

 filter by Schrceder and Von Dusch (1854) methods of sterilization, used by Schwann 

 and others of his time, and perfected by Pasteur, Koch and modern workers, (he 

 use of analine dyes to stain bacteria, the introduction of culture media by Cohn, 

 Pasteur, Brefeld, Schroeter, and the plate method of separating germs first used 

 by Koch; these landmarks have, in a large measure, helped to give us a clear 

 understanding and knowledge of the contagious natuie of diseases. 



We have seen that several authors believed that diseases like anthrax and cholera 

 were supposed to be carried by specific organisms. In some cases, as in anthrax, 

 Davaine had observed, in 1850, that the Wood of anthrax animals contained stiff 

 rods of the anthrax bacillus. PoUender observed the same rods in 1849. In 1863 and 

 1864 Davaine presented to the French academy the results of his innoculation experi- 



^^Lehrbuch der Pathologischeu Mykologie Vorlesungen fur Aerzte uud Studlrende. 

 pp. 973, with 108 figures, Harald Bruhn. Braunuschweig 1890, see p. VII. 



34 Chapters in Modern Botany, New Yorlt, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1893, pp. 201, with 8 

 figures. 



35 Lectures on Bacteria, second improved edition, English translation by Henry E. 

 F. Garnsey. revised by Isaac Bayley Balfour, pp. 193 with 20 figures. Clarendon Press, 

 Oxford, 1887. 



