200 Medicine : 



formations — even, perhaps, creations — in the 

 physico-chemical recesses of complex vital pro- 

 cesses, where, as we know, dead matter is being 

 continually wrought into living protoplasm. When 

 all is said, microbes have come into being some- 

 how at some time in the procession of the ages, 

 since it is not lawful to suppose that the bacillus 

 of phthisis — still less the postulated or recently 

 discovered microbe of syphilis — was present in 

 the Garden of Eden. Perhaps the strongest argu- 

 ment against the occurrence of a new disease 

 is the limit which there is to the capacity of a 

 definitely constructed organism to go wrong. 

 Just, indeed, as there are physical limits to the 

 number and variety of the movements which the 

 body can make, and it has probably made all its 

 possible movements before now ; so there are 

 limits to the possible varieties of its disorders, 

 conditioned as these are by the nature, number, 

 form, and disposition of its structures. Haply it 

 has now exhausted its morbid capabilities, as man 

 has pretty well exhausted the sin-conceiving 

 capacities of his mind and the sin-performing 

 capacities of his body — could not, for the life of 

 him, invent an essentially new sin or perform an 

 essentially new vice. 



In the work of fortifying the body to resist 

 inroads of disease, the most simple means are the 

 best, and, as Hippocrates said, it is in the use of 

 simple means that great physicians especially 

 differ from others. Pure air, clean and proper 



