THE MICROSCOPE. 187 
that fill up with their succulence the pores of earth, that moisten 
every atom subject to vour eyes or handled by your touch, you are 
startled and dismayed. You say mentally, ‘Can such things be? 
I never dreamed of this before! I thought what was invisible to me 
was non-existent in itself. I will remember this dread experiment.”’ 
The next day the experiment is forgotten. — Bulwer. 
ImporTANCE OF BactrEerroLocicaL Investieation to Crry Heanta.* 
—M. Charles Girard, chef of the Paris Municipal Laboratory, has 
forwarded a report to the Municipal Council, strongly recommending 
the establishment of a micrographic laboratory, the direction of 
which should be confided to doctors of medicine who have proved 
themselves qualified to undertake such an office ; that is, they must 
be chemists or bacteriologists specially educated for the purpose. 
The following are some of the most important passages on which the 
recommendation is founded. The necessity for the research of path- 
ogenic bacteria is becoming more and more urgent, particularly as 
regards milk and water, which are now recognized as being in the 
first rank of the means of the propagation of infectious maladies. 
To say nothing of the germs of small-pox and scarlet fever, which 
are conveyed by milk, the transmission of tuberculosis by this liquid, 
which has been so energetically discussed for some years, now counts 
but few adversaries in the medical world, and already several Com- 
missions of Hygiene of the Department of the Seine have expressed 
a wish that the search for the bacilli of phthisis in milk should be 
effected at the laboratory concurrently with the chemical analysis. 
Besides the study of milk, the same functionary may make at the 
Municipal Laboratory researches on the water employed for domestic 
purposes for the bacilli of typhoid fever and the bacillus of cholera, 
researches which are frequently demanded by the municipalities of 
the provinces. ‘The same persons may be charged to examine ciders, 
beers, wines and preserves, in respect to alterations and maladies, of 
which they are the object. The study of aliments in the same direc- 
tion presents great difficulties, and exacts on the part of one who 
has charge of this department an assiduous attention and incontest- 
able technical capacities. 
NEWS AND NOTES. 
He who takes up the study of bacteria enters a veritable 
wonderland, and the deeper into it he dips the greater will be his 
’ surprise, amazement and delight. He will be amazed to learn how 
*The Lancet, October 6th, 1888. 
