152 BACTERIOLOGY. 



cerned in preventing the spreading of disease 

 and in the disposal of putrefactive matter, to the 

 surgeon, who is anxious to exclude micro-organisms 

 during surgical operations, and to arrest the 

 development in wounds of bacteria which have 

 already gained an entrance, to the physician in 

 the treatment of micro-parasitic diseases. The 

 sanitarian and the surgeon must profit directly 

 by such experiments, for in the disinfection of 

 clothes and the sick-room by the one, and in 

 the application of antiseptic dressings and lotions 

 by the other, the micro-organisms are encoun- 

 tered as in the test experiments apart from the 

 living body. The physician, on the other hand, is 

 principally concerned in dealing with micro-para- 

 sites when circulating in the blood, or carrying on 

 their destructive processes in the internal tissues. 

 So far as our knowledge at present goes, the 

 physician can avail himself but little of the effect 

 of the direct application of the substances which 

 have been found to retard or destroy the growth 

 of the organisms in artificial cultivations, for the 

 concentrated form in which they would have to be 

 administered would prove as deleterious or as fatal 

 to the host as to the parasites. Thus Koch has 

 stated that to check the growth of the anthrax 

 bacillus in man it would be necessary that there 

 should be twelve grammes of iodine constantly in 

 circulation ; and that the dose of quinine necessary 

 to destroy the spirilla of relapsing fever would be 



