142 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [June, 



is found with the huge ones. The water should be tried every 

 day, and it will be found that in two or three days the spirilla will 

 become fewer and then will disappear altogether, their place being 

 taken by some other form, generally a bacillus. These bacilli 

 will live for a few days and will then be replaced by some other 

 form, and so on until micrococci appear, which form zooglea, and 

 grow as a scum over the surface of the water. 



This seems to me to be a most instructive study in the life- 

 history of these minute organisms — their rapid appearance 

 when the frog spawn had lost it vitality from want of oxygen, and 

 the enormous rapidity with which they increased from spores, 

 which must have been in the water waiting for a suitable pabu- 

 lum on which to exert the functions for which they were created. 

 Then, when they had passed through their life cycle and produced 

 by their digestion of this devitalized organic matter a suitable 

 condition for the next form, it at once began to develop from the 

 spores present and increase and in its turn produce a state of 

 things suitable for the next form, and so on. 



At the present time, when the relation of micro-organisms to 

 diseases is exciting so much attention, it seems to me that any 

 work done on the subject must help us to understand the part 

 these minute structures play in the animal economy. We must 

 remember that great changes have taken place in the opinions of 

 even the most rabid bacteriologists, when a year or two back one 

 ■germ was considered to be the virus of t3'phoid fever. The Hy- 

 gienic Congress in London last year brought out the fact that about 

 thirteen forms were so intimatelv associated with this disease that 

 no single one could be accredited with that honor. The same 

 with pneumonia, and now the awful bacillus of tuberculosis, for 

 whose destruction in dry sputum and elsewhere such elaborate 

 arrangements have been advocated, has been proved by a Jap- 

 anese working in Koch's laboratory to be dead both in sputum 

 and in cavities. This, all who have been working on the subject 

 have known, but could not absolutely prove. Li the face of all 

 this, we can hardly take up a medical or scientific paper without 

 finding some allusion to the bacillus of this or that disease. The 

 comma bacillus of cholera is frequently spoken of, although ten 

 distinct forms have been isolated from cholera patients in India 

 and proved to have no causal relation to the disease. Let any one 

 having time and experience take this question up that I have in- 

 dicated and thoroughly work it out, and I think he would be able 

 to throw a good deal of light on this question of bacterial action. 



I may say that the large spirilla make most beautiful slides 

 for the microscope, and when well stained their flagella form 

 splendid test objects for high powers, and also for the skill of the 

 microscopic photographer. Full details for staining, mounting, 

 and photographing them will be found in my work on Practical 

 Pathology and Morbid Histology, jiublished by Lee Bros. & Co., 

 of Phihulelphia. 



