330 DE NOVO ORIGIN OF BACTERIA 



right when he says ' : "It cannot be necessary to insist that th^ 

 prevention of leprosy is a work of far greater beneficence than is 

 the mere provision for the care and comfort of the leper. . . . 

 Not only in India but in South Africa, the West Indies, and many 

 other of our colonies, the saving in money as well as the mitigation 

 of human suffering would be immense if the leprosy question were 

 once settled. Large sums are now benevolently devoted to 

 asylums for lepers. My conviction is strong that one-tenth of the 

 sums thus annually expended would, if devoted to discovery of 

 cause, render these establishments unnecessary and save their cost 

 for all time."^ 



What has happened in regard to typhus fever affords the 

 strongest testimony as to the value of the broader outlook — the 

 search, that is, for the conditions of origin of a disease. The 

 ravages of typhus in our crowded cities and in our jails has been 

 enormously curtailed — not so much because of its diminished 

 spread by contagion, but because we have learned what are the 

 causes which engender it, and are, therefore, better able to prevent 

 its occurrence. There can, moreover, be little doubt that no im- 

 passable barrier exists between non-pathogenic and pathogenic 

 Bacteria. The mutability in form, and changeability in activity, of 

 all these microorganisms is immense. They may merge into one 

 another, just as the clinical types of disease with which they are 

 associated may be united by almost insensible transitions. In a 

 recent able communication on the " Borderlands of Diphtheria 

 and Scarlet Fever," we find Dr. Biss, after a large experience in a 

 fever hospital, saying,3 " the nuances between these conditions — 

 scarlet fever, diphtheria, and tonsiUitis — are so gentle that each 

 shades off into the other not at one but at many points." Of 

 course, if this is true, it can only mean that there are similarly 

 minute transitions between the activities of the microorganisms 

 associated with the maladies in question ; and that there must be 

 the production, under certain circumstances, of " specific " from 

 common microorganisms habitually present in the parts affected. 



This would again help to bring us very much to the point of 

 view long ago advocated by the late Professor Hueter who said at 



I " The Times," May 23, 1903. 



= The following paragraphs are additions made to this article since it 

 appeared in the columns of "The Lancet." 

 3 " The Lancet," Nov. 7, 1903, p. 1291. 



