THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 43 



CHAPTER V. 



HOW THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE EXPLAINS THE RELA- 

 TIONS BETWEEN THE BODY AND LOWER ORGANISMS, 

 PARTICULARLY MICRO-ORGANISMS, IN DISEASE AND 

 NON-NATURAL DEATH. 



I HAVE undertaken the apparently hopeless task 

 of tracking the disease-factor amongst the host of 

 suspected micro-organisms. 



I should have been utterly unable to fulfil my 

 engagement, if the discovery had not been already 

 made by a great observer and discoverer. In this 

 chapter I shall limit myself to the writings and pub- 

 lished statements of eminent medical men medical 

 biologists and physiologists. I shall prove that in the 

 admissions of those who, as I shall show, may be 

 regarded as the most able counsel for the accused, I 

 shall have quite enough to secure a verdict and 

 sentence of guilty, against the organism which I accuse 

 of being the disease and death-factor. 



In doing this I feel myself in the position of an 

 officer of the law, whose unpleasant task it is to 

 announce to an afflicted family, where the wife and 

 mother has been foully murdered (and the members 

 of that family are, in their distraction, vaguely sus- 

 pecting neighbours, servants, friends, enemies, seen or 

 unseen, or some half suspecting that the death was 

 by suicide), that the husband and father, the respected 

 head of the family, and the mainstay of the household, 

 is himself the murderer. 



With what utter incredulity and indignant denial 



