26 MICROBES AND TOXINS 



the lungs with our first respiratory movements and our first 

 cries ; they are deposited on our skin from our first bath and 

 our first swaddHng-clothes. Even four hours after birth - and 

 invariably between the tenth and the seventeenth hour of life 

 — they have already reached the intestine. 



Our skin is inhabited chiefly by round bacteria, such as 

 streptococci, and especially staphylococci; these latter are most 

 abundant, and there are several species of them, some 

 commoner than others. They do not inhabit so much the 

 smooth surface of the epidermis as the hair follicles and their 

 adnexa, the sebaceous glands, which are regular dens of 

 bacteria. Even the cleanest persons, however little oily their 

 skins, have only to press between the fingers a little fold of skin 

 on the end or at the side of the nose, to squeeze out what 

 looks like a little worm, but which is nothing else than a colony 

 of staphylococci. 



As a ftiatter of fact, however healthy the skin, it is more or 

 less inhabited by bacteria, which, however, in general, remain 

 harmless ; the skin is not infected. But given at some point a 

 lesion, a boil or pustule, where bacteria have multiplied, the 

 microbes of these foci spread themselves over all the cutaneous 

 surface, even to the most distant parts. " On the surface of 

 healthy skin, the 'difiFusion of germs takes place around the 

 original lesion for a great distance, and with an abundance and 

 continuity such as is only paralleled by the law of conservation 

 of widely distributed species. An analogous case is that of 

 plants covering square miles of country round with their 

 pollen or their winged seeds " (Sabouraud). Hence, the best 

 way to avoid cutaneous infections is to preserve intact the 

 epidermis, and not to weaken by the abuse of antiseptics its 

 protecting cells, which endeavour to maintain the integrity of 

 the skin against bacteria. 



The mucous membranes, warmer and moister than the skin, 

 form a better soil for microbes. There is in the conjunctiva 

 of the eye, among others, a little bacillus, resembling the 

 bacillus of diphtheria, which is found from the first hours of life 

 (Morax). In the cavities of the nose and pharynx, there are 



