26 The Story of the Bacteria 



uncooked food. We should not, however, 

 think of these little organisms which we thus 

 unwittingly consume as things necessarily un- 

 clean or unwholesome. For they are only little 

 cells after all, and nearly all the food which we 

 consume, whether animal or vegetable, is made 

 up of masses of cells which are either fit to eat 

 in their natural condition, as in the pulp of 

 fruits, or become so by simple cooking or other 

 preparation. 



There is really very little difference, so far as 

 wholesomeness is concerned, between the few 

 thousand vegetable cells which we call bacte- 

 ria which may be clinging to the surface of a 

 grape, and a few hundred vegetable cells of 

 larger size of which the grape itself is com- 

 posed. Both are alike worked over by the 

 digestive organs, under ordinary conditions, 

 into nutritive material for the uses of the 

 body. 



There are poisonous vegetables, and there 

 are, more 's the pity, as we shall see by and 

 by, poisonous bacteria, but we do not shudder 

 as we swallow a mushroom to think what 

 might have happened to us if we had swallowed 



