60 
when your grape juice will have fermented, and mins will not 
have undergone any change.” 
At the end of a month, sure enough, a very great change 
had taken place in the flask which was not Pasteur's, whereas in 
his, the grape juice, instead of being turbid and mixed with a 
dirty slime, was clear and unchanged. 
This process of fermentation, or the power of splitting up 
complex into more simple bodies, is possessed by many fungi 
other than yeast. 
Pasteur’s researches laid the foundation of Lord Lister's 
work chiefly on the putrefactive organisms. I can only remind, 
you of a very small number of Lord Lister’s experiments—experi¬ 
ments which ultimately led to the saving of millions of lives. 
One, which I know he himself valued greatly, he was fond 
of showing us. He wanted to prove that beef tea could be 
exposed to the air as long as you like without its undergoing 
putrefactive change, provided the dust of the air to which 
the minute fungi were attached did not reach the beef tea. A 
flask (glass) had the neck drawn out into a number of curves, so 
that the air could reach the beef tea in the flask, whereas the 
dust was trapped in each bend of the neck of the flask, the result 
being that Lister kept this beef tea absolutely unchanged for io 
years. 
Extending his researches further, he kept an amputated leg 
in a sterile condition simply by taking care that no fungi reached 
it. 
All the wonderful results in connection with Septicaemia, or 
wound fever, are based on these and other experiments. 
Xow let us look at some other diseases caused by minute 
fungi. Typhoid, Diptheria, Anthrax, Cholera, Tubercle, 
Pneumonia, Glanders in horses, and many others are nothing more 
than a train of symptoms resulting from a process of fermenta¬ 
tion in animal juices, the various minute fungi splitting up 
complex into more simple bodies known as toxins, which, acting 
like so many alcohols, produce their respective diseases. 
In man there are four factors principally concerned in infec¬ 
tion : (i) an abrasion, or point of entrance; (2) a depressed 
vitality, such as is produced by alcohol; (3) bad hygienic surround¬ 
ings : (4) the Microbe. 
Exactly the same essentials will be found in the case of 
plants if over watering is substituted for an excessive indulgence 
in alcohol. 
It must be remembered that there are “ friendly ” microbes as 
well as those that cause disease. 
I here is plenty of free nitrogen in the air, but protoplasm 
cannot assimilate it without the aid of these minute fungi. Our 
digestion could not go on without them, and organic matter would 
not be destroyed. 
How, then, are we to protect ourselves against the ravages 
of these minute fungi. Fortunately, they soon use up the food 
