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The rapidity with which a wound in a reasonably healthy individual, cleaned and dressed on modern surgical principles, will heal, is almost incredible, until it has actually been seen. The principal danger of garden-soil or street-dust in a wound is not so much from pus-germs, though these may be present, as from another "bug" the tetanus or lockjaw bacillus.
If Turk steals the mutton for dinner, And goes off to gulp it, Why screen HIM, the solemn old sinner, And call ME the culprit? And if I am fond of the sand-banks, And fresh garden-soil, Why should you molest with your brickbats My hard, honest toil? And why should you call it a 'dusty muss, And make me abandon My labor? Remember, 'DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM!
It is called Othonna crassifolia and has fleshy, nearly cylindrical leaves, and exactly mimics some of the crassulaceous species. On dry soil the leaves become shorter and thicker and assume a reddish tinge, the stems remain short and woody and bear their leaves in dense rosettes. On moist and rich garden-soil this aspect becomes changed at once, the stems grow longer and of a deeper green.
I felt an increasing conviction that here there would be no disappointment; but it soon became palpable that another class of depredators had marked our trees for their own. Little brown toes could occasionally be seen peeping from the foliage, and little bare feet left their print on the garden-soil. Humanity had evidently deposited its larva in the vicinity.
This deadly organism lives in the alimentary canal of the horse, and hence is to be found in any dirt or soil which contains horse manure. It is, fortunately, not very common, or widely spread, but enough so to make it the part of prudence to have thoroughly asepticized and dressed any wound into which considerable amounts of garden-soil, or street-dust, have been rubbed.
The reason why wounds of the feet and hands have had such a bad reputation, both for festering and giving rise to lockjaw, is that it is precisely in these situations that they are most likely to get garden-soil, or stable manure, into them.
If the cut or scratch is of any depth or seriousness whatever, or the knife, tool, or other instrument be dirty, or if any considerable amount of street-dust or garden-soil has got into the wound, then it is, by all means, advisable to go to a physician, have the wound thoroughly cleaned on antiseptic principles, and put up in antiseptic dressing.
But there a great wonder awaited him. For though the scant earth of the hillside was parched and crumbling, his garden-soil reeked with moisture, and his plants had shot up, fresh and glistening, to a height they had never before attained.
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