424 BACTERIOLOGY. 



value to the sanitary welfare of the whole 

 community is for the most part lacking in our 

 government. We almost always refrain from 

 expending at the right time some thousands 

 of dollars, and then when an epidemic is pre- 

 cipitated in our midst we sacrifice millions in 

 paralysis of commerce and manufactures, as 

 Hamburg was forced to do in 1892. 



The outlook is less promising in the matter 

 of the immediate conquest of the disease germs. 

 The Pasteur-Tyndall-Miquel period when the 

 air was supposed to contain clouds of bacteria 

 was followed by the Kochian era when all fluids 

 were declared to be infected, when stationary 

 and transportable cuspidores were devised, 

 and when the disinfection nuisance reached an 

 unprecedented height. In this latter period 

 an imperial decree dealing with infectious 

 disease was promulgated in the form of a law 

 for safeguarding the people by means of penal 

 enactments ; to execute this law one half of the 

 people of Germany would have to be changed 

 into guardians of the other half to preserve 

 them from harm or to watch them during their 

 imprisonment for misdemeanors with the ex- 

 ception of the children, of course, who already 

 have guardian angels. 



The general works of sanitation, whose re- 

 lations to predisposition to disease have been 



