294 GERMS, 



the results in the case of anthrax what Jenner obtained in small 

 pox. The method was so successful that in 1888, 269,599 sheep 

 and 34,464 oxen were inoculated, and now the insurance com- 

 panies insist on the preventive measure being taken before they 

 will insure oxen or sheep, so strong is their conviction of the 

 efficacy of this method for stamping out what is believed in 

 Egypt to be the direct descendant of one of the plagues which 

 afflicted their country in the time of the Pharaohs. 



As to the great work Pasteur has been enabled to do from a 

 study of these minute plants in the case of chicken cholera, 

 cholera, and hydrophobia, and now, though unable to find the 

 plant for the latter yet from his immense previous knowledge 

 of the methods which bacteria work, he came to be as certain 

 that they were there as he was certain there were stars in the 

 heavens which he could not see. All this would take too long 

 to repeat, besides the fact of their history is being repeated month 

 by month in the current periodicals. 



But I will take up no more time than to say that the study of 

 the small plants which, unable like their green companions to 

 form their bodies from carbon in the form of carbonic acid, are 

 compelled to look for ready-made food, has become a belief, and 

 that a very general one among men of science, that it is in these 

 plants that the cause of many a disease is to be found. 



And that the results obtained hitherto, though magnificent, 

 are as nothing compared with what we have a right to look for- 

 ward to in the future, that we are within measurable distance 

 of seeing these enemies of our race turned by education to their 

 own destruction by the inoculation into their victims of their 

 own weakened poison. While it should not be forgotten that 

 Sir Joseph Lister struck, by a study of Pasteur's discoveries, 

 with the idea that the putrefaction so often setting in after 

 amputation might be due to bacteria, introduced the carbolic 

 acid spray, now or till very lately universally used for washing 

 wounds, destroying bacteria and allowing of the healtliy liealing 

 of the wound. 



