376 EASTERN COUNTIES VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
able paper on “ Germs,” their influence in propagating disease, 
and “ Disinfectants,” their influence in preventing disease, and 
in modifying its spread. 
President, Fellows, and Members of my Profession. 
Gentlemen,—Modern science and research unravel many useful 
problems, make many additions to the comfort and enjoyment of 
life, and in the domain of medicine and surgery do much to pre¬ 
serve health, and battle with disease and death ; they have thrown 
much light upon the laws of health, they demonstrate many of 
those conditions which bring sickness to man and beast, they 
elucidate the nature of various diseases, and hence secure greater 
success in their prevention and treatment. The recent study of 
germs has, especially, cleared up some difficult questions in 
medicine and surgery, and in surgery particularly have led to great 
practical results. These active germs dancing in the sunbeam, 
swallowed by every breath we draw, endowed with wonderful 
powers of reproduction, the great cause of change or putrefac¬ 
tion in organised bodies is the subject of my address on this 
occasion. 
Germs, then, may be said to be matter occupying the border 
land between living and non-living things, it is life in an utterly 
structureless state, the germinal or life-producing matter afloat 
in the air, out of which Bacteria spores, and allied low organisms 
originate. Germs exhibit no characteristic which can be appreciated 
by the microscope notwithstanding we employ lenses that will 
make a single hair appear a foot in diameter, and an object an 
inch long 250 feet in length. By such instruments we are enabled 
to make visible organised bodies which were before wholly un¬ 
known, and convince ourselves of the existence of other bodies 
not yet traced, the tangible has taken to a large extent the place 
of the intangible, we have a clearer comprehension of how 
creation is worked and developed, and it may turn out that the 
atmosphere is much more pervaded by this class of bodies than 
we imagine ; we are only learning to believe in their abundance, 
and who knows where our learning will stop, it is apparently 
true that many of these bodies are of a transparent kind, like a 
subtile essence, may float in the upper regions, live there per¬ 
manently, and sometimes come down perpendicularly in air 
currents whilst they are ready to spring into life. I am deeply 
impressed with the conviction, that we are but upon the thres¬ 
hold of our acquaintance with these marvellous transformations; it 
is a new history, a new link in the chain of being; we seem in a 
certain sense to be living in an invisible world, a short time ago 
nothing was known of the life-history of these organisms; it 
seems a distinct landmark to our intellectual advancement; it 
shows that there is a generation growing which is anxious to 
explore the mysteries of science, a short time ago nothing was 
known of the life-history of these mysteries. We find the com¬ 
monest forms assumed by new born specks of living matter to be 
