No\-EMBEE 5, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



627 



and intemperance in another field. The " edu- 

 cation " ought to consist in teaching the indi- 

 vidual how and what to do, i. e., the simple 

 bacteriological knowledge and simple bac- 

 teriological technique necessary to avoid " the 

 swallowing, by one individual, of the dis- 

 charges of other individuals." This knowl- 

 edge, taught as the chief end of a simple 

 bacteriological course, could be conveyed in 

 lessons and class-room demonstrations, not of 

 diagrams, but of real living bacteria, without 

 involving the opposition engendered by ana- 

 tomical or physiological demonstrations on 

 living animals which alone will ever make 

 physiology anything but a formula to the lay 

 (or to any other) mind. That it should be 

 taught in the elementary schools, and espe- 

 cially to the girls, is made clear by the two 

 facts that the majority of children (about 80 

 per cent.) leave school before the high school' 

 is reached, and that upon the girls as house- 

 keepers and mothers must the family defense 

 •depend, as well as, by precept and example, the 

 proper training of the children in the personal 

 defense against infection. 



Community defense against infection as 

 •contrasted with family and personal defense 

 is a matter for the public health official, and 

 the lack of this distinction between what is 

 personal or family and what is public health 

 seems to be a great stumbling block over 

 ■which many earnest souls have fallen more 

 than once. Public health must always deal 

 largely with the prevention of the infection 

 of public utilities with human discharges — 

 especially infected human discharges; while 

 family and personal defense is a matter (pri- 

 marily) for the mother. When it is remem- 

 bered that the great mass of all the infectious 

 diseases of the country, especially in children, 

 are necessarily handled and nursed, not in 

 hospitals by trained nurses but inevitably and 

 necessarily by mothers, so that the greatest 

 single factor in the spread of infection from 

 the recognized case, at the present time, out- 

 side of public utilities, is again inevitably 



' It seems unlikely that more than 20 per cent. 

 oi the population receives high school education; 

 •or more than 1 per cent, a university education. 



and necessarily the mother, then the train- 

 ing of the prospective mother in simple 

 bacteriologic technique, at first apparently 

 a wild dream, becomes a most practical 

 and serious problem. Educators in bacteriol- 

 ogy should most earnestly ask themselves if 

 the invaluable information concerning the ex- 

 istence, distribution, and above all the avoid- 

 ance, of bacterial infection which to them is a 

 mere commonplace should not be widely dis- 

 tributed amongst the people. Are the bac- 

 teriologists of the country doing their whole 

 duty in confining their teaching to students 

 of the arts of medicine, public health, indus- 

 try and agriculture? Is not the time ripe for 

 a propaganda for the teaching of bacteriology 

 to the masses? The trained bacteriologist 

 may pass unscathed through fifty epidemics 

 of the ordinary infectious diseases — not be- 

 cause of anatomical or physiological training, 

 not even because of epidemiological knowledge 

 — but wholly because he understands the 

 simple elements of bacterial aseptic tech- 

 nique and follows them logically and con- 

 sistently. Surely it is the duty of the 

 bacteriologist to pass on the simple tech- 

 nique of bacteriological asepsis at least 

 to the people at large. It is not for the 

 physician to do it — except at the bedside and 

 for the individual case. It is for the bacterio- 

 logical teacher to enforce personal defense 

 against infection amongst the well before the 

 bedside is reached — to furnish the ground- 

 work upon which the physician may build on 

 occasion. Such courses should be given in the 

 public schools in such grades as to reach the 

 children between eight and sixteen years old; 

 these courses should consist in their simplest 

 form of demonstrations, through use of agar 

 or gelatin plates, of the existence, and distri- 

 bution of bacteria in air, water, milk, dust, 

 feces, etc., and especially on hands: extending 

 somewhat in scope and in individual experi- 

 mental work as the grades are ascended. 

 Microscopes would not be essential and the 

 necessary apparatus and media could be fur- 

 nished at a very low cost. 



In the high schools, gradual advance in the 

 detail of experiments should be arranged with 



