FILTH AS infants' FOOD 91 



varieties than concerning others is that in recent years 

 the germ origin of disease has been very extensively 

 investigated. Many of the worst diseases are caused 

 by these tiny bacteria, or bacilli, which have been very 

 closely observed in consequence. 



Take, for example, the dread disease, tuberculosis, 

 or consumption. As far back as Hippocrates, who 

 lived four hundred years before the Christian Era, 

 this disease was known as the most fatal of all diseases.' 

 Isocrates, also a Greek physician, who lived about the 

 fifth century before Christ, wrote of the disease as 

 one which was transmissible through contagion." 

 Thereafter we find in the history of medicine and 

 pathology constant and growing recognition of the 

 fact that the disease can be transmitted from one 

 person to another in many ways. Then, in 1865, a 

 celebrated French physician, Villemin, proved that 

 tuberculosis could be produced in animals by inocula- 

 tion, not in the lungs merely, but in various parts of 

 the body." Thus it was demonstrated that the disease 

 is transmissible from man to beast, therefore probably 

 also from beast to man. It was also evident that the 

 disease must be caused by a specific germ, or bacterium. 

 This germ was not actually isolated and identified 

 until 1882, when Professor Robert Koch, the eminent 

 German physician, announced the discovery of the 

 Bacillus tuberculosis, a discovery which has since been 

 verified by numberless physicians in aU lands." 



