CHAPTER XXVI 

 IMMUNITY AND CURATIVE INOCULATIONS 



DURING the last twenty years the whole attitude of 

 the study and investigation of disease-causing 

 microbes has advanced from the preliminary step of 

 merely identifying certain microbes as the causes of 

 certain diseases to a further step, viz. that of attempting 

 to defend the animal and the human body against their 

 attacks in the manner already so finely started by 

 Pasteur. For many years disease after disease was 

 examined and found to be caused by special bacteria or 

 other microbes. Even non-infectious diseases or diseases 

 only communicable under very special conditions were 

 found to be due to microbes, so that it is probable that all 

 disease that is not due to congenital malformation or to 

 mechanical injury, or to poison fabricated in the weapons 

 of larger animals and plants, or by man himself, is due to 

 microbes. " Life," says Lord Justice Moulton, " is one 

 ceaseless war against these enemies, and the periods of 

 our too-transient successes are known as health." One of 

 the last diseases traced to microbes is that sad condition 

 known as " infantile paralysis," by which so many of the 

 brightest and best members of the community have been 

 crippled, from childhood onwards, through life. 



Of late we have been making rapid strides in arriving 

 at a knowledge as to how Nature herself protects higher 

 creatures from the excesses and exuberance of destructive 



