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They all act in the same way; and in such cases as the dressing of wounds it is more easy to use this method of excluding bacteria than by the exclusion of the air or by the use of cotton wool. We have here another object for inquiry viz., the particular property of these different antiseptics, the property which they possess of preventing decomposition. This knowledge is very ancient indeed.
Professor J. A. Thomson also warns us that our experience is very limited, and, for all we know, protoplasm may be forming naturally in our own time. Mr. Butler Burke has, under the action of radium, caused the birth of certain minute specks which strangely imitate the behaviour of bacteria. Dr. Bastian has maintained for years that he has produced living things from non-living matter.
In the second place, the vital struggle includes the battles of every species with other kinds of living things whose interests are in opposition. The relations of protozoa and bacteria, conger-eels and other fish, English sparrows and hawks, plants and herbivorous animals, are typical examples of the universal conflict in which all organisms are involved in some way.
It is no more possible to convert one species into another than it is among the higher orders of plants. It is believed that bacteria do form a group of plants by themselves, and are not to be regarded as stages in the history of higher plants.
They are in streams of running water in even greater quantity than in standing water. This is simply because running streams are being constantly supplied with water which has been washing the surface of the country and thus carrying off all surface accumulations. Lakes or reservoirs, however, by standing quiet allow the bacteria to settle to the bottom, and the water thus gets somewhat purified.
The problem of giving a mild type of this extraordinarily severe disease was not an easy one. It could not be done, of course, by inoculating the animals with a small number of the bacteria, for their power of multiplication would soon make them indefinitely numerous. It was necessary in some way to diminish their violence.
They pump out the contents into great big puncheons on their three-wheeled carts, and they spread this liquid, rich in nitrates, potash and other fertilizing materials over their growing crops. That is why if a man or a horse gets cut in Flanders he has to go and be inoculated against lock-jaw. Wounds do not heal readily here, the soil and air are too rich in bacteria.
We have had under observation and treatment a number of insane patients whose peculiar delusion or monomania was an exaggerated fear of germs, a genuine bacteriophobia. Keep yourself clean and vigorous from within, and you cannot be affected by disease taints and germs from without. Bacteria are practically omnipresent. We absorb them in food and drink, we inhale them in the air we breathe.
If the barns, the cows, the dairies, the milk vessels, etc., are all kept in condition of strict cleanliness, if especial care is taken particularly at the seasons of the year when trouble is likely to arise, and if some attention is paid to the kind of food which the cattle eat, as a rule the cream will not become infected with injurious bacteria.
The protective effects of the inflammatory reaction depend for the most part upon the transudation of lymph and the emigration of leucocytes. The lymph contains the opsonins which act on the bacteria and render them less able to resist the attack of the phagocytes, as well as the various protective antibodies which neutralise the toxins.
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