304 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



air, of the means of rendering it visible, and of the perfect 

 immunity from putrefaction which accompanies the contact 

 of germless infusions and moteless air. Consider the woes 

 which these wafted particles, during historic and prehis- 

 toric ages, have inflicted on mankind; consider the loss 

 of life in hospitals from putrefying wounds; consider the 

 loss in places where there are plenty of wounds, but no 

 hospitals, and in the ages before hospitals were anywhere 

 founded; consider the slaughter which has hitherto fol- 

 lowed that of the battlefield, when those bacterial destroy- 

 ers are let loose, often producing a mortality far greater 

 than that of the battle itself; add to this the other concep- 

 tion that in times of epidemic disease the self-same float- 

 ing matter has frequently, if not always, mingled with it 

 the special germs which produce the epidemic, being thus 

 enabled to sow pestilence and death over nations and con- 

 tinents — consider all this, and you will come with me to 

 the conclusion that all the havoc of war, ten times multi- 

 plied, would be evanescent if compared with the ravages 

 due to atmospheric dust. 



This preventible destruction is going on to-day, and 

 it has been permitted to go on for ages, without a whisper 

 of information regarding its cause being vouchsafed to 

 the suffering sentient world. We have been scourged by 

 invisible thongs, attacked from impenetrable ambuscades, 

 and it is only to-day that the light of science is being let 

 in upon the murderous dominion of our foes. Facts like 

 these excite in me the thought that the rule and governance 

 of this universe are different from what we in our youth 

 supposed them to be — that the inscrutable Power, at once 

 terrible and beneficent, in whom we live and move and 

 have our being and our end, is to be propitiated by means 



