ABOUT CHOLERA 249 



jelly-plates are, indeed, a wonderful revelation and a fit- 

 ting " horticultural " accompaniment to the dark and 

 gloomy forests of rampant wild microbes in our insides, 

 where all are struggling for the soil, one crushing out 

 another by its sheer exuberance, a third choked by the 

 encircling luxuriance of a fourth, just as the trees, mosses, 

 and climbers of a tropical jungle are budding, pushing, 

 grasping, destroying one another in their irrepressible 

 growth. 



Pettenkofer, of Munich, when he found (as Metchni- 

 koff did later) that the cholera-bacillus could be swallowed 

 in spoonfuls without producing any harm, came to the 

 conclusion that, though it was a necessary agent of the 

 disease " cholera," yet that there was still an unknown 

 additional determining " cause " of a local character which 

 must be present in order to render the " cholera-bacillus " 

 effective. Metchnikoff is now seeking this " local " cause 

 and parallel antagonistic causes, in the microbian flora of 

 localities which locally effect an entry into the human 

 body, and are, on the one hand, " favourable," or on the 

 other hand " antagonistic." Take as a concrete example 

 Versailles. When cholera has been rife in Paris, there has 

 been no cholera at Versailles. There is something at or 

 about Versailles which does not permit cholera to flourish 

 in men who live there. The guess the hypothesis which 

 is being investigated at this moment, is that there is 

 possibly a microbe present at Versailles which enters into 

 the microbial jungle of the intestine of mankind there, 

 and is inimical to, repressive of, the cholera-bacillus when 

 it also arrives there. Similarly, the suggestion is enter- 

 tained, and is being experimentally tested, that there is 

 in Paris a microbial inhabitant of the intestine which is 

 favourable to the energetic growth of the cholera-bacillus 

 when it puts in an appearance, but that this favouring (as 

 yet undetermined) microbe does not exist at Versailles. 



