56 BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



homes should be provided at once in the interest 

 of physique, of morals, of industrial efficiency, and 

 municipal health." 



Yet, despite all these facts and the overwhelm- 

 ing evidence which has been collected on the dire 

 results which follow in the wake of overcrowding 

 and insanitary dwellings, we find a prominent 

 magistrate in one of our great industrial cities 

 publicly expressing himself as follows at a 

 municipal banquet: "The Town Council some- 

 times attempted too much. For instance, they 

 had been far too anxious to get quit of the slums. 

 Now slums, in his opinion, were one of the necessi- 

 ties of all large towns, and it was impossible in 

 the present state of civilisation to dispense with 

 slums unless they could take the people living in 

 them, who were not fit to live anywhere else, and 

 drown them wholesale, as would have been done 

 in the time of the French Revolution.-" 



We have seen how bacteria may be distributed 

 by dust, how they may linger in crowded tene- 

 ments and badly ventilated buildings, that in- 

 sanitary surroundings provide, in fact, for the 

 scientist a well-stocked bacterial covert, where he 

 may with ease bag his thousands of germs of 

 various descriptions. The fact already referred 

 to, that the bacteria of consumption may be re- 

 leased in the sputum of phthisical persons, has 



