414 BACTERIOLOGY. 



the Hamburg cholera epidemic revealed, she 

 acknowledged that the better situated individu- 

 als were raised quite by themselves above the 

 surrounding uncleanliness but added " When, 

 with the present facilities for compassing 

 cleanliness, filth continues to exist, the general 

 conditions of life must be at fault and for that 

 reason, in such an unclean locality, there is 

 always found diminished resistance of the body 

 toward disease. This fact helps to explain 

 somewhat more adequately than any one- 

 sided consideration of disease germs and con- 

 tagion the difference in resistant power which 

 is so strikingly to the disadvantage of the 

 poor. The disease germs are certainly widely 

 disseminated in any epidemic, and some door- 

 way by which contagion may enter is to be 

 found everywhere. But in the case of the 

 well-to-do the main avenues of entrance are for 

 the most part warded better than among poor 

 people because the whole bodily organization 

 is in better condition." 



In this education to healthfulness, just as 

 in Brehmer's method for the cure of tubercu- 

 losis, no regard at all is taken of the disease 

 germ ; the predisposition of the man alone is 

 kept in view and this predisposition is acted 

 upon by means of those general conditions of 

 life of which I have made mention earlier, so 



