MICROPHYTOLOGY 139 



moving dead or foreign particles. Our contract with them 

 resembles that made by the Saxons with the Danes. They 

 are free to take what tojl they choose so long as they protect 

 us against all other robbers. Serum which contains anti- 

 toxins is equally effective whether leucocytes be present or 

 no ; but it is not improbable that the leucocytes add to their 

 services in catching germs the further service of secreting 

 antitoxins. It may be that in some incomprehensible way a 

 successful invasion trains them to resist in future the strategy 

 of the invading host. 



A few words must be added with regard to the methods 

 which everyone may adopt to prevent the entrance of bacteria. 

 At a reception in Vienna it was said of Lord Lister that he 

 had saved more lives than the Franco-German War, then 

 recently ended, had sacrificed. But antiseptics incompletely 

 carried out are worse than no antiseptics at all. Microbes 

 can pour through a pin-prick in a sheet of paper faster than 

 rats through a barnyard gate. Their extreme minuteness 

 they average, perhaps, about three or four hundredths of a 

 millimetre in length by less than one thousandth of a milli- 

 metre in breadth makes it extremely difficult to keep them 

 out. When they find admittance their effects are extra- 

 ordinarily certain. Fifty-seven houses in Bristol were 

 supplied by milk which came from a farm where the milk- 

 cans were washed in water contaminated by typhoid germs. 

 Typhoid fever broke out in forty-one of these houses. In 

 India it has happened more than once that every person 

 who partook cf cholera-infected food has been attacked with 

 the disease. There is no limit to the care which must be 

 taken. At a certain officer's quarters every hygienic pre- 

 caution which could be thought of was adopted. The 

 servants were not allowed as they came home from the 

 laundry to leave the camp. Serviettes and table-cloths were 

 carefully disinfected ; but the native servants rinsed the dish- 

 cloths in an infected stream. A jelly was set in a carefully 

 cleaned mould, and all who partook of it were attacked by 



