<>0 MICROBES AXD HEALTH. 



die, and are converted into pus, proving conclusively 

 that their action is only mechanical. The bacteri- 

 ologists do not pretend that the red corpuscles are 

 germ destroyers, or that nature has given them any 

 power to pass out of the vessels and invade surrund- 

 ing tissues, yet when the arteries dilate sufficiently 

 rand the circulation has slowed down to A certain rate, 

 the red corpuscles do pass through, showing the change 

 is mechanical. They would have passed through be- 

 fore, but they were so small and light that they kept 

 in the center of the stream. It is these red corpuscles 

 ihat gives redness to a swollen and inflamed part. 



Bacteriology claims the white corpuscles have the 

 power to roam through the system at will and that they 

 do this in order to seek out and destroy any invading 

 germs, and thus render the body free from disease. Is 

 that true? The white corpuscles are a soft proto- 

 plasmic mass, and they have the same power of motion 

 that the white of an egg has when placed in the hand 

 und allowed to slip through between the fingers. That 

 is the way they pass through the arteries and other tis- 

 sues, finding their way between the little cells of which 

 the arteries and other structures are formed. 



Do the white corpuscles have the power to attack 

 and destroy germs as claimed by Prof. Metschnikoff 

 ^nd his followers? A professor in one of our leading 

 universities, medical department, uses these words: 

 ^'The white corpuscles make a wholesale attack upon 

 the germs, catch and overpower them, gulp them down, 

 and then secrete a poison which destroys them and they 

 pass into solution." 



