216 THOSE OTHER ANIMALS. 



prevent the bacillus coming in contact with our skin ; or we 

 may paint ourselves on emerging from our baths with some 

 compound which may be discovered to be lethal to him. 

 The passages to our lungs will doubtless be defended by 

 a respiratory apparatus that will filter him out of the air 

 as it passes in. While thus we endeavour in every way to 

 defend ourselves against his attacks, we shall take the 

 offensive against him when he succeeds in eluding these 

 precautions, and effecting an entrance. Unfortunately, at 

 present the bacillus shows himself to be almost invulnerable ; 

 but, like Achilles, he has a weak spot in his heel. While 

 able, so far as is at present known, to defy all drugs and 

 poisons with which he can be attacked while dwelling in 

 the human frame, he has none of the hardihood of the 

 cannibal, and is unable to support a diet consisting of 

 infusions of his own relations. A boiled decoction of his 

 children or cousins is fatal to him. It is upon this line 

 that our combat with him is likely, at any rate for a time, 

 to be fought out. 



This discovery has thrown a lurid light upon many ancient 

 and Eastern legends. These have hitherto been entirely 

 misunderstood or not understood at all. Saturn was, we 

 know, to be destroyed by his children ; and Arab stories 

 abound with instances where princes and rulers having been 

 warned that their offspring would be the cause of their 

 death, the children were accordingly confined in towers and 

 prisons to prevent the fulfilment of these prophecies. 

 Hitherto, such tales have appeared mere fables, originating 

 in human fancy ; but it can now be seen that the Ancients 

 and the Orientals alike had some kind of prevision of the 

 bacillus, and that this creature was pre-figured in the legends 



