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T. W. Engelmann proposes, in the Botanische Zeitung, a new test, of an extremely delicate nature, for determining the presence of very minute quantities of oxygen, namely: its power of exciting the motility of bacteria.

These flagella keep up a lashing to and fro in the liquid, and the lashing serves to propel the bacteria through the liquid. It is hardly possible to say much about the structure of the bacteria beyond the description of their external forms. With all the variations in detail mentioned, they are extraordinarily simple, and about all that can be seen is their external shape.

Every food we take must be modified by our bodies before entering the circulation, and milk is no exception. When milk is allowed to stand for a while the sugar ferments, through the action of the lactic acid bacteria. The sugar is turned into lactic acid, which combines with the casein and when this process has continued for a certain length of time the result is clabbered milk or sour milk.

If the form of sepsis is not determinable, streptococcic or staphylococcic vaccines might be administered. It is still a question whether such "shotgun" medication with bacteria is advisable. Patients recover at times from almost anything, and the interpretation of the success of such injection treatment is difficult.

But these experiments have demonstrated beyond question that the abnormal ripening which is common in cheese factories is due to the presence of undesirable species of bacteria in the milk. Many of the experiments in making cheeses by means of artificial cultures of bacteria have resulted in decidedly abnormal cheeses.

The first and second considerations were merely matters of research and calculation; the third was largely speculative, admitting of no more definite conclusion than that the time had come when hygienic necessities required a thorough rousing and ridding-out of microbes, bacteria, and other pests too minute to be worth particularising.

#Conditions of Bacterial Life.# Bacteria require for their growth and development a suitable food-supply in the form of proteins, carbohydrates, and salts of calcium and potassium which they break up into simpler elements.

But the straining it receives through a coarse cloth, while it will remove the coarser particles of dirt, has no effect upon the bacteria, for these pass through any strainer unimpeded. Again, the milk vessels themselves contain bacteria, for they are never washed absolutely clean.

By surgically clean we mean that no bacteria are present which can interfere with the healing of the tissues, and only those who are familiar with surgical work can realize the importance of this condition. Its maintenance is implied in the term "aseptic surgery," and upon this depends the whole distinction between the surgery of the present and the surgery of the past.

Ordinary cleanliness, good vitality, clean blood and tissues, the organs of elimination in good, active condition and, last but not least, a positive, fearless attitude of mind will practically establish natural immunity to the inroads and ravages of bacteria and disease taints.