WHAT IS PHYSICAL LIFE 



or deadly nightshade vine. That excel- 

 lent botanist, however, the potato bug, if 

 potato vines give out, at once turns to what 

 eggplants he can find, and those failing, 

 he eats the stinkweed, and lastly the bella- 

 donna vines. 



But as to unchangeableness we may say 

 that empires have risen and fallen, great 

 races of man have come and gone, yet the 

 tubercle bacillus causes in us the same 

 tuberculosis which Hippocrates so well de- 

 scribed, two thousand three hundred years 

 ago, and some think that Ebers' Egyptian 

 papyrus alludes to tuberculous ulcers thir- 

 teen hundred years before Hippocrates. 

 Had Hippocrates only possessed a prop- 

 erly equipped laboratory he might then 

 have identified the tubercle bacillus and 

 distinguished it from other bacilli, because 

 it takes a characteristic stain with methy- 

 lene blue made faintly alkaline with caustic 

 potash, and it contains more fat than any 

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