64 THE STORY OF THE BACTERIA. 



surely destroy them. While literature owes 

 much to the wit and cleverness of the genius 

 of the breakfast-table, science and humanity 

 are not less debtors to the zeal and pertinacity 

 of the young doctor, who still declared for his 

 beliefs, though his more aged and then more 

 renowned confreres applied to him many terms 

 of opprobrium and disrespect. 



Now let us look a little more closely at the 

 way in which these tiny organisms cause in- 

 flammation, suppuration, or the formation of 

 pus and blood poisoning. We have seen in 

 the first chapter that although most of the 

 cells of the body have assumed special forms 

 and powers as the body develops out of its 

 embryonic stage, there are some cells which 

 scarcely seem to have got beyond the stage in 

 which the simplest of the unicellular organ- 

 isms, such as the amoeba, belong. The most 

 prominent of these lowly organized cells in 

 the body are the white blood-cells or, leucocytes 

 as they are called. Under ordinary conditions 

 they go circling round the blood-vessels along 

 with the red blood-cells, or, crawling out of the 

 blood-vessels, slowly make their way around 



