360 
NOTE  ON  CARBOLIC  ACID,  ETC, 
if  it  was  not  for  the  undisputed  fact  that  accurate  knowledge  is 
the  essential  element  of  the  greatest  success  in  all  things.  The 
hurtful  material  in  all  foul  emanations  and  foul  air  is  probably 
inodorous  and  insensible,  but  is  endowed  with  vitality,  and  the 
laws  of  nature  tend  to  direct  this  embryonic  material  to  a  soil 
and  climate  fitted  for  its  functions  of  germination  and  repro- 
duction. When  the  material  fails  to  come  under  these  favorable 
conditions  it  either  dies,  or  lies  dormant  until  the  vicissitudes  of 
nature  become  favorable  to  its  development.  But  here  the  op- 
posing influences  working  under  the  same  laws  come  to  exert 
their  powers,  and  the  same  laws  which  distribute  and  disseminate 
these  germs  of  fermentation  are  as  ready  and  effective  in  dis- 
tributing the  antidote  or  azymotic.  Hence,  as  an  illustration, 
cattle  acclimated  to  a  given  zymotic  disease,  through  which  they 
have  more  or  less  perfectly  passed,  disseminate  the  cause  or 
seed  of  this  disease  by  means  of  their  excretions.  The  germs 
fall  with  the  excretions  upon  the  soil  of  the  roads  and  fields 
over  which  these  cattle  pass,  and  may  or  may  not  there  find  the 
conditions  necessary  to  their  germination  and  growth.  The 
excretions  dry  up  to  dust,  and  the  winds  scatter  this  dust  and 
these  germs  over  the  pastures  and  through  the  atmosphere,  and 
they  are  thus  present  in  sufficient  quantity,  when  other  cattle 
not  acclimated  nor  protected  against  the  influences  come  within 
the  infected  locality.  Carried  into  the  lungs  and  stomachs  of 
such,  with  the  air  and  food,  they  meet  with  the  conditions  neces- 
sary to  their  growth  and  reproduction.  Now  if  the  azymotic 
could  be  distributed  in  the  same  way,  there  would  soon  be  an 
end  of  zymotic  diseases,  but  with  it  an  end  of  all  fermentation, 
and  an  end  of  the  present  order  of  creation,  in  which  fermenta- 
tion performs  an  indispensable  part. 
By  following  out  some  such  abstract  of  the  present  state  of 
knowledge,  gleaned  from  the  various  authorites,  the  safest,  best 
and  most  permanent  indications  to  direct  the  uses,  and  prevent 
the  abuses  and  misapplications  of  such  a  substance,  may  be 
easily  obtained ;  and  it  remains  only  for  the  writer  to  mention 
some  special  uses  which  might  not  be  reached  through  reasoning 
or  which  have  been  most  prominently  successful  in  practice. 
In  the  treatment  of  burns  and  scalds  this  is  the  best  applica- 
