Emil Christian Hansen

Milton

preface the title of this little volume sufficiently explains its contents it only remains to add that much of the text has already appeared from time to time in the form of popular articles in various magazines it has however been carefully revised and considerably added to in parts where later researches have thrown further light upon the subjects dealt with g c frankland northfield worcestershire november nineteen o two chapter i bacteriology in the victorian era a little more than sixty years ago the scientific world received with almost incredulous astonishment the announcement that beer yeast consists of small spherules which have the property of multiplying and are therefore a living and not a dead chemical substance that they further appear to belong to the vegetable kingdom and to be in some manner intimately connected with the process of fermentation when cagniard latour communicated the above observations on yeast to the paris academy of sciences on june twelfth eighteen thirty seven the whole scientific world was taken by storm so great was the novelty boldness and originality of the conception that these insignificant particles hitherto reckoned as of little or no account should be endowed with functions of such responsibility and importance as suggested by at the time when the tours sowed the first seeds of this great gospel of fermentation started curiously almost simultaneously across the rhine by schwan and kutzing its greatest subsequent apostle and champion was but a schoolboy exhibiting nothing more than a schoolboy's truant love of play and distaste for lessons louis pasteur was only a lad of fifteen buried in a little town in the provinces of france whose peace of mind was certainly not disturbed or likely to be by rumors of any scientific discussion however momentous carried on in the great far-distant metropolis yet some thirty and odd years later there was not a country in the whole world where pasteur's name was not known and associated with those classical investigations on fermentation in the pursuit of which he spent so many years of his life and which have proved of such incalculable benefit to the world of commerce as well as science thanks to pasteur we are no longer in doubt as to the nature of yeast cells so familiar in fact have we become with them that at the dawn of the twentieth century we are able to select at will those particular varieties for which we have a predilection and employ those which will produce for us the special flavour we desire in our wines or in our beers large and splendidly equipped laboratories exist for the express purpose of studying all kinds and descriptions of yeasts for finding out their characteristic functions and cultivating them with all the tenderness and care that a modern gardener bestows upon the rarest orchids all this is now an old story but some sixty years ago the great battle had yet to be fought which was to establish once and for all the dependence of fermentation upon life and vanquish for ever those subtle arguments which so long refused to life any participation in the work of fermentation and other closely allied phenomena when however pasteur finally cleared away the debris of misconception which had so long concealed from view the vital character of the changes associated with these processes the bacterial ball if we may so call it was set rolling with a will and information concerning these minute particles of living matter was rapidly gathered up from all directions the recognition so long refused to bacteria was now ungrudgingly given for it was realised at last that in the words of m duclos whenever and wherever there is decomposition of organic matter whether it be the case of a weed or an oak of a worm or a whale the work is exclusively performed by infinitely small organisms they are the important almost the only agents of universal hygiene they clear away more quickly than the dogs of constantinople or the wild beasts of the desert the remains of all that has had life they protect the living against the dead they do more if there are still living beings if since the hundreds of centuries the world has been inhabited life continues it is to them we owe it fortunately the provisions made by nature for the preservation of the bacterial race are of so lavish a description that no fear need be entertained that this useful and indispensable world of life will be wiped out the fabulous capacity for multiplication possessed by them a new generation arising in considerably less than an hour the powers of endurance which some of them exhibit in presence of the most trying vicissitudes of heat and cold they have been known to survive exposure lasting for seven days to a temperature of about minus two hundred degrees centigrade the inability of starvation or desiccation to undermine their constitution combine to render the question of the extinction of bacteria as remote as it is undesirable tempted by the prospects of exploring in this newly revealed world of life investigators rushed into the field and the bacterial fever has been hardly less pronounced in these last years than that rush for a material golden harvest which has characterized so many enterprises in southern latitudes the scientific results of this microbe fever have happily however been of a more solid and substantial character than can be said to have followed the more tangible but sordid ventures in south african minds vague hypotheses have given place to facts and bacteria have been brought more and more within the horizon of human knowledge thanks to the genius and untiring zeal of investigators all over the world by mechanical improvements in microscopes and subtle methods for colouring bacteria enabling us to study their form with precision by ingenious devices for supplying them with suitable food materials or in other words by the creation of bacterial nurseries providing the means for watching their growth and observing their distinctive habits and character this important branch of the vegetable kingdom has been raised from obscurity to one of the principal places in our catalogue of sciences and bacteriology has won for itself an individual footing in the scientific curriculum of our great educational institutions and is represented in literature by such famous serials devoted to the publication of bacterial and allied researches as the annales de l'institut pasteur the central blot for bacteriology the zeutschrift für hygiene the annalee de and other well-known journals which constitute an essential but ever-increasing burden upon the library shelves as well as pocket of the investigator museums of bacteria have been established where not only specimens of particular varieties of a permanent character for comparison and reference can be obtained but living cultivations of hundreds of different micro-organisms are maintained and only those who have had the charge of bacteria can realise the enormous amount of skilled labour involved in the catering for such a multitude in which individual likes and dislikes in regard to diet and treatment must if success is to be secured be as carefully considered as is necessary in the case of the most delicate and highly pampered patient bacteria by means of these depots can in fact be bought and exchanged by collectors with as much facility as postage stamps with the all-important difference that this collecting of bacteria is not a mere mania or speculation but serves a most useful purpose to the busy investigator who cannot afford either the time or space in which to maintain a large bacterial family it is of immense convenience to be able to obtain at a moment's notice a trustworthy culture say of typhoid or tuberculosis or specimens of obscure origin from air or water for purposes of investigation these bacterial cultures are all guaranteed pure free from contamination or admixture with other and alien microorganisms and are strictly what they are represented to be although such a declaration is attached to many commodities at the present day with ludicrous incongruity in the case of microorganisms such a breach of faith is unknown and the antecedents of a microbe may be said to be regarded as of as much moment and to be as jealously preserved as is the pedigree of the most ambitious candidate for honors at a cattle or dog show amongst some of the curiosities to be found on the shelves of micro-museums may be mentioned bacteria which give out light and thus like glow-worms reveal themselves in the dark these light bacteria were originally discovered in sea-water and on the bodies of sea-fish and cultures of them have been successfully photographed the only source of light being that provided by the bacilli themselves the amount of light emitted by a single bacillus might indeed defy detection by the most sensitive plate procurable but when gathered together in multitudes the magnitude of which even eight figures fail to express these phosphorescent bacteria enable the dial of a watch to be easily read in the dark whilst photographs of the face of a watch taken in such bacterial light have been so successful that the time at which the photograph was taken could be distinctly seen of bacteria it may indeed truly be said as has maeterlinck of the labours of bees though it be here the infinitely little that without apparent hope adds itself to the infinitely little though our eye with its limited vision look and see nothing their work halting neither by day nor by night will advance with incredible quickness mention may perhaps appropriately be made here of the highly interesting fact discovered by professor percy frankland that ordinary bacteria which do not phosphoresce are capable of affecting a photographic film in absolute darkness and can by this means produce a picture of themselves if however a transparent piece of glass is placed between the bacteria and the film no photograph results showing that glass interferes with their activity in this respect the author points out that as this action upon the photographic film does not take place through glass it is in all probability due to the evolution by the bacteria of certain volatile chemical substances which either directly or indirectly enter into reaction with the sensitive film similar phenomena have been discovered in regard to many metals as well as organic substances but this is the first observation which has been recorded of the action of living structures on sensitive films in the dark we have already referred to the important services which pasteur has rendered by distinguishing between different varieties of yeast and separating them out according to their functions and properties pioneer work which has been followed up by and borne such splendid fruit in the hands of the renowned danish investigator emil christian hansen of copenhagen this work of isolating out individual varieties of microorganisms has been not only pursued with the energy familiar to all in the case of bacteria associated with disease but has been pursued in various other though perhaps less well-known directions A great deal of activity has lately been exhibited in so-called dairy bacteriology, and a long list has already been compiled of milk, cheese, and butter microbes, and agricultural authorities, even in this country, are slowly awakening to the fact that, in order to compete on modern lines with foreign dairy produce, dairy schools must be established where bacteriology is taught and where instruction is given in the principles of scientific butter and cheese making.

but bacteria of the brewery and of the dairy are not the only useful germs which are to be found on the shelves of microbe museums wine and tobacco manufacturers on application may respectively obtain the bacterial means of transforming the crudest must into the costliest claret and the coarsest tobacco into the most fragrant havana already considerable progress has been made in the isolation of particular varieties of wine yeast whilst highly encouraging results have been obtained by schusland and others in the separation of various valuable tobacco fermenting organisms agricultural authorities again owe a debt of gratitude to these distinguished investigators whose labors have discovered the art of imprisoning the microorganisms which play such an important part in the fertilization of the soil bacterial fertilizers are among the latest achievements which bacteriology has accomplished in this wonderful half century and the purchase of special varieties of bacteria to suit the requirements of particular kinds of leguminous plants is now fast becoming a mere everyday commercial transaction.

But efforts for the amelioration of the conditions under which plant life is carried on have not been confined to providing plants with suitable bacterial friends.

Vigorous and successful efforts have been made to remove from their entourage those bacterial enemies and undesirable parasites which have for so long played so important a part in the crop returns of many an agriculturalist.

for the identification and separation of the plant parasites of various kinds we have largely to acknowledge our indebtedness to american investigators and the encouragement and support which dr irwin smith amongst others has received from the government of the united states in the prosecution of these researches indicates how great is the public importance attached to them there are in america alone fifty experiment stations where plant diseases are studied whilst at a number of the colleges and universities more or less attention is given to the subject some idea of the loss occasioned to agriculturists by these plant pests may be formed by a recent announcement that the department of agriculture in queensland was prepared to offer a reward of five thousand pounds for the discovery of a means to eradicate the prickly pear disease plant pathology has not yet had a distinct chair allotted to it in any of the great universities but the subject is of such vast industrial importance that doubtless before long some seat of learning will do itself the honour to establish one and so set the example a striking instance of the advantages of taking stock so to speak of the attributes of bacteria will occur to every one in the revelation which has followed of their powers to solve one of the most knotty problems of the day

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It has striven to devise means by which such diseases may be mastered, and one of the most glorious achievements of the past 60 years is the progress which has been made in the domain of preventative medicine.

the classical investigations of pasteur on the attenuation of bacterial viruses such as those of chicken cholera and anthrax and his elaboration of a method of vaccination with these weakened viruses whereby the power of the disease over its victim is removed or modified are too well known to require repetition here the success which followed pasteur's researches in this direction led him to undertake that great and difficult task the prevention of rabies in the human subject a task well-nigh superhuman in its demands and one which only he could accomplish in whose life the pregnant words of a modern writer found expression il ne suffit pas de posseder une the victory over this disease which crowned a long life replete with brilliant achievements has been universally recognized and numerous institutes have arisen in all quarters of the globe for extending the benefits of this discovery for the relief of suffering humanity these pasteur or bacteriological institutes also furnish highly important centres where original research work of various kinds is carried on and the stimulus which has thus been given to experimental science in the remotest parts of the world cannot be overestimated methods for the prevention of disease have however not been confined to the elaboration and employment of modified or weakened bacterial viruses the subject has been still more recently approached from another and quite different side this new departure we also originally owe to france although its practical development has been worked out in germany it was in eighteen eighty eight that two frenchmen richet and herracourt communicated a memoir to the comte rendu of the academy of sciences describing the curious results they had obtained with rabbits purposely infected with a diseased microbe the staphylococcus some of the rabbits died after being inoculated with this micro-organism and some remained alive and they proceed to point out how it was that such different results were obtained before the inoculations were made some of the animals received injections of blood taken from a dog which a few months previously had been infected with this same microbe but had recovered the rabbits which received the dogs blood all survived the inoculations while those which did not succumbed in every case to the action of the staphylococcus so struck were the authors by these remarkable results that they repeated them and their further investigations fully confirmed those originally obtained proving that they were not en here we have the first steps in the direction of serum therapy that new treatment of disease which during the last few years has been so prominently before the public in the cure of diphtheria tetanus and other maladies and for the development of which we owe so much to the labours of bering roux kitasato and other investigators the astounding fact that the blood of animals which have been trained to artificially withstand a particular disease becomes endowed with the power of protecting other animals from that disease is only in the earliest stages of its application the results however which have already been accomplished are of so encouraging a character that the hope is justified that serum therapy is destined to revolutionize the treatment of disease one of the latest uses which has been made of this method of combating disease is the employment of serum for the cure of bubonic plague during the recent outbreak of plague in india yersin a former student and assistant at paris pasteur institute was despatched to india to superintend the administration of this new remedy and the serum he employed was that derived from horses which had been subjected to and had recovered from inoculations with the plague bacillus the treatment of snake bites by means of curative serum will be dealt with in more detail later on it only remains to cite it here as another instance of the success which is attending the new methods of protection against disease Another and highly ingenious application of serum has been brought forward by Pfeiffer, Gruber, Vidal, and others.

This is the so-called serodiagnosis of disease and has been employed already with success in the identification of typhoid fever as such.

The method sounds simple in the extreme and consists in taking a few drops of blood from a patient supposed to be suffering from typhoid fever and mixing them with a recent cultivation in broth of genuine typhoid bacilli.

As was to be anticipated, frequently no bacteria at all were found, and it was only when such comparatively large volumes of air as 1,000 liters, about 200 gallons, were explored, that microbes in numbers varying from 4 to 11 were discovered.

The air of the country is far freer from microbial life than that of cities, whilst open spaces, such as those afforded by the London parks, are paradises of purity compared with the streets and their attendant bacterial slums.

that it is no exaggeration to describe streets from the bacterial point of view as slums is to be gathered from the fact that much less than a thimbleful of that dust which is associated with the blustering days of march and the scorching pavements of summer may contain from nine hundred to one hundred and sixty millions of bacteria but investigators have not been content to merely quantitatively examine street dust in addition to estimating the numerical strength of these bacterial dust battalions the individual characteristics of their units have been exhaustively studied and the capacity for work beneficent or otherwise possessed by them has been carefully recorded the qualitative discrimination of the bacteria present in dust has resulted in the discovery of amongst other disease germs the consumption bacillus the lockjaw or tetanus bacillus bacteria associated with diphtheria typhoid fever pulmonary affections and various septic processes such is the appetizing menu which dust furnishes for our delectation There can be no doubt, therefore, that dust forms a very important distributing agent for microorganisms.

Dust particles, aided by the wind, being to bacteria what the modern motor car, with its benzene or electric current, is to the ambitious itinerant of the present day.

Milton

preface the title of this little volume sufficiently explains its contents it only remains to add that much of the text has already appeared from time to time in the form of popular articles in various magazines it has however been carefully revised and considerably added to in parts where later researches have thrown further light upon the subjects dealt with g c frankland northfield worcestershire november nineteen o two chapter i bacteriology in the victorian era a little more than sixty years ago the scientific world received with almost incredulous astonishment the announcement that beer yeast consists of small spherules which have the property of multiplying and are therefore a living and not a dead chemical substance that they further appear to belong to the vegetable kingdom and to be in some manner intimately connected with the process of fermentation when cagniard latour communicated the above observations on yeast to the paris academy of sciences on june twelfth eighteen thirty seven the whole scientific world was taken by storm so great was the novelty boldness and originality of the conception that these insignificant particles hitherto reckoned as of little or no account should be endowed with functions of such responsibility and importance as suggested by at the time when the tours sowed the first seeds of this great gospel of fermentation started curiously almost simultaneously across the rhine by schwan and kutzing its greatest subsequent apostle and champion was but a schoolboy exhibiting nothing more than a schoolboy's truant love of play and distaste for lessons louis pasteur was only a lad of fifteen buried in a little town in the provinces of france whose peace of mind was certainly not disturbed or likely to be by rumors of any scientific discussion however momentous carried on in the great far-distant metropolis yet some thirty and odd years later there was not a country in the whole world where pasteur's name was not known and associated with those classical investigations on fermentation in the pursuit of which he spent so many years of his life and which have proved of such incalculable benefit to the world of commerce as well as science thanks to pasteur we are no longer in doubt as to the nature of yeast cells so familiar in fact have we become with them that at the dawn of the twentieth century we are able to select at will those particular varieties for which we have a predilection and employ those which will produce for us the special flavour we desire in our wines or in our beers large and splendidly equipped laboratories exist for the express purpose of studying all kinds and descriptions of yeasts for finding out their characteristic functions and cultivating them with all the tenderness and care that a modern gardener bestows upon the rarest orchids all this is now an old story but some sixty years ago the great battle had yet to be fought which was to establish once and for all the dependence of fermentation upon life and vanquish for ever those subtle arguments which so long refused to life any participation in the work of fermentation and other closely allied phenomena when however pasteur finally cleared away the debris of misconception which had so long concealed from view the vital character of the changes associated with these processes the bacterial ball if we may so call it was set rolling with a will and information concerning these minute particles of living matter was rapidly gathered up from all directions the recognition so long refused to bacteria was now ungrudgingly given for it was realised at last that in the words of m duclos whenever and wherever there is decomposition of organic matter whether it be the case of a weed or an oak of a worm or a whale the work is exclusively performed by infinitely small organisms they are the important almost the only agents of universal hygiene they clear away more quickly than the dogs of constantinople or the wild beasts of the desert the remains of all that has had life they protect the living against the dead they do more if there are still living beings if since the hundreds of centuries the world has been inhabited life continues it is to them we owe it fortunately the provisions made by nature for the preservation of the bacterial race are of so lavish a description that no fear need be entertained that this useful and indispensable world of life will be wiped out the fabulous capacity for multiplication possessed by them a new generation arising in considerably less than an hour the powers of endurance which some of them exhibit in presence of the most trying vicissitudes of heat and cold they have been known to survive exposure lasting for seven days to a temperature of about minus two hundred degrees centigrade the inability of starvation or desiccation to undermine their constitution combine to render the question of the extinction of bacteria as remote as it is undesirable tempted by the prospects of exploring in this newly revealed world of life investigators rushed into the field and the bacterial fever has been hardly less pronounced in these last years than that rush for a material golden harvest which has characterized so many enterprises in southern latitudes the scientific results of this microbe fever have happily however been of a more solid and substantial character than can be said to have followed the more tangible but sordid ventures in south african minds vague hypotheses have given place to facts and bacteria have been brought more and more within the horizon of human knowledge thanks to the genius and untiring zeal of investigators all over the world by mechanical improvements in microscopes and subtle methods for colouring bacteria enabling us to study their form with precision by ingenious devices for supplying them with suitable food materials or in other words by the creation of bacterial nurseries providing the means for watching their growth and observing their distinctive habits and character this important branch of the vegetable kingdom has been raised from obscurity to one of the principal places in our catalogue of sciences and bacteriology has won for itself an individual footing in the scientific curriculum of our great educational institutions and is represented in literature by such famous serials devoted to the publication of bacterial and allied researches as the annales de l'institut pasteur the central blot for bacteriology the zeutschrift für hygiene the annalee de and other well-known journals which constitute an essential but ever-increasing burden upon the library shelves as well as pocket of the investigator museums of bacteria have been established where not only specimens of particular varieties of a permanent character for comparison and reference can be obtained but living cultivations of hundreds of different micro-organisms are maintained and only those who have had the charge of bacteria can realise the enormous amount of skilled labour involved in the catering for such a multitude in which individual likes and dislikes in regard to diet and treatment must if success is to be secured be as carefully considered as is necessary in the case of the most delicate and highly pampered patient bacteria by means of these depots can in fact be bought and exchanged by collectors with as much facility as postage stamps with the all-important difference that this collecting of bacteria is not a mere mania or speculation but serves a most useful purpose to the busy investigator who cannot afford either the time or space in which to maintain a large bacterial family it is of immense convenience to be able to obtain at a moment's notice a trustworthy culture say of typhoid or tuberculosis or specimens of obscure origin from air or water for purposes of investigation these bacterial cultures are all guaranteed pure free from contamination or admixture with other and alien microorganisms and are strictly what they are represented to be although such a declaration is attached to many commodities at the present day with ludicrous incongruity in the case of microorganisms such a breach of faith is unknown and the antecedents of a microbe may be said to be regarded as of as much moment and to be as jealously preserved as is the pedigree of the most ambitious candidate for honors at a cattle or dog show amongst some of the curiosities to be found on the shelves of micro-museums may be mentioned bacteria which give out light and thus like glow-worms reveal themselves in the dark these light bacteria were originally discovered in sea-water and on the bodies of sea-fish and cultures of them have been successfully photographed the only source of light being that provided by the bacilli themselves the amount of light emitted by a single bacillus might indeed defy detection by the most sensitive plate procurable but when gathered together in multitudes the magnitude of which even eight figures fail to express these phosphorescent bacteria enable the dial of a watch to be easily read in the dark whilst photographs of the face of a watch taken in such bacterial light have been so successful that the time at which the photograph was taken could be distinctly seen of bacteria it may indeed truly be said as has maeterlinck of the labours of bees though it be here the infinitely little that without apparent hope adds itself to the infinitely little though our eye with its limited vision look and see nothing their work halting neither by day nor by night will advance with incredible quickness mention may perhaps appropriately be made here of the highly interesting fact discovered by professor percy frankland that ordinary bacteria which do not phosphoresce are capable of affecting a photographic film in absolute darkness and can by this means produce a picture of themselves if however a transparent piece of glass is placed between the bacteria and the film no photograph results showing that glass interferes with their activity in this respect the author points out that as this action upon the photographic film does not take place through glass it is in all probability due to the evolution by the bacteria of certain volatile chemical substances which either directly or indirectly enter into reaction with the sensitive film similar phenomena have been discovered in regard to many metals as well as organic substances but this is the first observation which has been recorded of the action of living structures on sensitive films in the dark we have already referred to the important services which pasteur has rendered by distinguishing between different varieties of yeast and separating them out according to their functions and properties pioneer work which has been followed up by and borne such splendid fruit in the hands of the renowned danish investigator emil christian hansen of copenhagen this work of isolating out individual varieties of microorganisms has been not only pursued with the energy familiar to all in the case of bacteria associated with disease but has been pursued in various other though perhaps less well-known directions A great deal of activity has lately been exhibited in so-called dairy bacteriology, and a long list has already been compiled of milk, cheese, and butter microbes, and agricultural authorities, even in this country, are slowly awakening to the fact that, in order to compete on modern lines with foreign dairy produce, dairy schools must be established where bacteriology is taught and where instruction is given in the principles of scientific butter and cheese making.

but bacteria of the brewery and of the dairy are not the only useful germs which are to be found on the shelves of microbe museums wine and tobacco manufacturers on application may respectively obtain the bacterial means of transforming the crudest must into the costliest claret and the coarsest tobacco into the most fragrant havana already considerable progress has been made in the isolation of particular varieties of wine yeast whilst highly encouraging results have been obtained by schusland and others in the separation of various valuable tobacco fermenting organisms agricultural authorities again owe a debt of gratitude to these distinguished investigators whose labors have discovered the art of imprisoning the microorganisms which play such an important part in the fertilization of the soil bacterial fertilizers are among the latest achievements which bacteriology has accomplished in this wonderful half century and the purchase of special varieties of bacteria to suit the requirements of particular kinds of leguminous plants is now fast becoming a mere every-day commercial transaction but efforts for the amelioration of the conditions under which plant life is carried on have not been confined to providing plants with suitable bacterial friends vigorous and successful efforts have been made to remove from their entourage those bacterial enemies and undesirable parasites which have for so long played so important a part in the crop returns of many an agriculturist for the identification and separation of the plant parasites of various kinds we have largely to acknowledge our indebtedness to american investigators and the encouragement and support which dr irwin smith amongst others has received from the government of the united states in the prosecution of these researches indicates how great is the public importance attached to them there are in america alone fifty experiment stations where plant diseases are studied whilst at a number of the colleges and universities more or less attention is given to the subject some idea of the loss occasioned to agriculturists by these plant pests may be formed by a recent announcement that the department of agriculture in queensland was prepared to offer a reward of five thousand pounds for the discovery of a means to eradicate the prickly-pear disease plant pathology has not yet had a distinct chair allotted to it in any of the great universities but the subject is of such vast industrial importance that doubtless before long some seat of learning will do itself the honor to establish one and so set the example a striking instance of the advantages of taking stock so to speak of the attributes of bacteria will occur to every one in the revelation which has followed of their powers to solve one of the most knotty problems of the day

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anthrax tuberculosis cholera typhoid plague influenza tetanus erysipelas are only a few of the diseases the active agents of which bacteriology has revealed to us bacteriology has however not been content to merely identify particular microorganisms with particular diseases it has striven to devise means by which such diseases may be mastered and one of the most glorious achievements of the past sixty years is the progress which has been made in the domain of preventive medicine the classical investigations of pasteur on the attenuation of bacterial viruses such as those of chicken cholera and anthrax and his elaboration of a method of vaccination with these weakened viruses whereby the power of the disease over its victim is removed or modified are too well known to require repetition here the success which followed pasteur's researches in this direction led him to undertake that great and difficult task the prevention of rabies in the human subject a task well-nigh superhuman in its demands and one which only he could accomplish in whose life the pregnant words of a modern writer found expression il ne suffit pas de posseder une the victory over this disease which crowned a long life replete with brilliant achievements has been universally recognized and numerous institutes have arisen in all quarters of the globe for extending the benefits of this discovery for the relief of suffering humanity these pasteur or bacteriological institutes also furnish highly important centres where original research work of various kinds is carried on and the stimulus which has thus been given to experimental science in the remotest parts of the world cannot be overestimated methods for the prevention of disease have however not been confined to the elaboration and employment of modified or weakened bacterial viruses the subject has been still more recently approached from another and quite different side this new departure we also originally owe to france although its practical development has been worked out in germany it was in eighteen eighty eight that two frenchmen richet and herracourt communicated a memoir to the comte rendu of the academy of sciences describing the curious results they had obtained with rabbits purposely infected with a diseased microbe the staphylococcus some of the rabbits died after being inoculated with this micro-organism and some remained alive and they proceed to point out how it was that such different results were obtained before the inoculations were made some of the animals received injections of blood taken from a dog which a few months previously had been infected with this same microbe but had recovered the rabbits which received the dogs blood all survived the inoculations while those which did not succumbed in every case to the action of the staphylococcus so struck were the authors by these remarkable results that they repeated them and their further investigations fully confirmed those originally obtained proving that they were not en here we have the first steps in the direction of serum therapy that new treatment of disease which during the last few years has been so prominently before the public in the cure of diphtheria tetanus and other maladies and for the development of which we owe so much to the labours of bering roux kitasato and other investigators the astounding fact that the blood of animals which have been trained to artificially withstand a particular disease becomes endowed with the power of protecting other animals from that disease is only in the earliest stages of its application the results however which have already been accomplished are of so encouraging a character that the hope is justified that serum therapy is destined to revolutionize the treatment of disease one of the latest uses which has been made of this method of combating disease is the employment of serum for the cure of bubonic plague during the recent outbreak of plague in india yersin a former student and assistant at paris pasteur institute was despatched to india to superintend the administration of this new remedy and the serum he employed was that derived from horses which had been subjected to and had recovered from inoculations with the plague bacillus the treatment of snake bites by means of curative serum will be dealt with in more detail later on it only remains to cite it here as another instance of the success which is attending the new methods of protection against disease Another and highly ingenious application of serum has been brought forward by Pfeiffer, Gruber, Vidal, and others.

And then the big one comes on online is Louis Pasteur and he does a lot of work on fermentation in the 1850s.

And then interestingly enough, what you talk about with beer, right, relates to a gentleman called Christian Hansen and he was at Carlsberg and he started developing pure yeast culture methods back in 1883.

So, yeah, I mean, relating to the beer aspect of it, definitely that that kind of plays into that part.

Right.

If there are still living beings, if, since the hundreds of centuries the world has been inhabited, life continues, it is to them we owe it.

fortunately the provisions made by nature for the preservation of the bacterial race are of so lavish a description that no fear need be entertained that this useful and indispensable world of life will be wiped out the fabulous capacity for multiplication possessed by them a new generation arising in considerably less than an hour the powers of endurance which some of them exhibit in presence of the most trying vicissitudes of heat and cold they have been known to survive exposure lasting for seven days to a temperature of about minus two hundred degrees centigrade the inability of starvation or desiccation to undermine their constitution combine to render the question of the extinction of bacteria as remote as it is undesirable tempted by the prospects of exploring in this newly revealed world of life investigators rushed into the field and the bacterial fever has been hardly less pronounced in these last years than that rush for a material golden harvest which has characterized so many enterprises in southern latitudes the scientific results of this microbe fever have happily however been of a more solid and substantial character than can be said to have followed the more tangible but sordid ventures in south african minds vague hypotheses have given place to facts and bacteria have been brought more and more within the horizon of human knowledge thanks to the genius and untiring zeal of investigators all over the world by mechanical improvements in microscopes and subtle methods for colouring bacteria enabling us to study their form with precision by ingenious devices for supplying them with suitable food materials or in other words by the creation of bacterial nurseries providing the means for watching their growth and observing their distinctive habits and character this important branch of the vegetable kingdom has been raised from obscurity to one of the principal places in our catalogue of sciences and bacteriology has won for itself an individual footing in the scientific curriculum of our great educational institutions and is represented in literature by such famous serials devoted to the publication of bacterial and allied researches as the annales de l'institut pasteur the central blot for bacteriology the zeutschrift für hygiene the annalee de and other well-known journals which constitute an essential but ever-increasing burden upon the library shelves as well as pocket of the investigator museums of bacteria have been established where not only specimens of particular varieties of a permanent character for comparison and reference can be obtained but living cultivations of hundreds of different micro-organisms are maintained and only those who have had the charge of bacteria can realise the enormous amount of skilled labour involved in the catering for such a multitude in which individual likes and dislikes in regard to diet and treatment must if success is to be secured be as carefully considered as is necessary in the case of the most delicate and highly pampered patient bacteria by means of these depots can in fact be bought and exchanged by collectors with as much facility as postage stamps with the all-important difference that this collecting of bacteria is not a mere mania or speculation but serves a most useful purpose to the busy investigator who cannot afford either the time or space in which to maintain a large bacterial family it is of immense convenience to be able to obtain at a moment's notice a trustworthy culture say of typhoid or tuberculosis or specimens of obscure origin from air or water for purposes of investigation these bacterial cultures are all guaranteed pure free from contamination or admixture with other and alien micro-organisms and are strictly what they are represented to be although such a declaration is attached to many commodities at the present day with ludicrous incongruity in the case of micro-organisms such a breach of faith is unknown and the antecedents of a microbe may be said to be regarded as of as much moment and to be as jealously preserved as is the pedigree of the most ambitious candidate for honours at a cattle or dog show amongst some of the curiosities to be found on the shelves of micro-museums may be mentioned bacteria which give out light and thus like glow-worms reveal themselves in the dark these light bacteria were originally discovered in sea-water and on the bodies of sea-fish and cultures of them have been successfully photographed the only source of light being that provided by the bacilli themselves the amount of light emitted by a single bacillus might indeed defy detection by the most sensitive plate procurable but when gathered together in multitudes the magnitude of which even eight figures fail to express these phosphorescent bacteria enable the dial of a watch to be easily read in the dark whilst photographs of the face of a watch taken in such bacterial light have been so successful that the time at which the photograph was taken could be distinctly seen of bacteria it may indeed truly be said as has maeterlinck of the labours of bees though it be here the infinitely little that without apparent hope adds itself to the infinitely little though our eye with its limited vision look and see nothing their work halting neither by day nor by night will advance with incredible quickness mention may perhaps appropriately be made here of the highly interesting fact discovered by professor percy frankland that ordinary bacteria which do not phosphoresce are capable of affecting a photographic film in absolute darkness and can by this means produce a picture of themselves if however a transparent piece of glass is placed between the bacteria and the film no photograph results showing that glass interferes with their activity in this respect the author points out that as this action upon the photographic film does not take place through glass it is in all probability due to the evolution by the bacteria of certain volatile chemical substances which either directly or indirectly enter into reaction with the sensitive film similar phenomena have been discovered in regard to many metals as well as organic substances but this is the first observation which has been recorded of the action of living structures on sensitive films in the dark we have already referred to the important services which pasteur has rendered by distinguishing between different varieties of yeast and separating them out according to their functions and properties pioneer work which has been followed up by and borne such splendid fruit in the hands of the renowned danish investigator emil christian hansen of copenhagen this work of isolating out individual varieties of microorganisms has been not only pursued with the energy familiar to all in the case of bacteria associated with disease but has been pursued in various other though perhaps less well-known directions A great deal of activity has lately been exhibited in so-called dairy bacteriology, and a long list has already been compiled of milk, cheese, and butter microbes, and agricultural authorities, even in this country, are slowly awakening to the fact that, in order to compete on modern lines with foreign dairy produce, dairy schools must be established where bacteriology is taught and where instruction is given in the principles of scientific butter and cheese making.

but bacteria of the brewery and of the dairy are not the only useful germs which are to be found on the shelves of microbe museums wine and tobacco manufacturers on application may respectively obtain the bacterial means of transforming the crudest must into the costliest claret and the coarsest tobacco into the most fragrant havana already considerable progress has been made in the isolation of particular varieties of wine yeast whilst highly encouraging results have been obtained by schusland and others in the separation of various valuable tobacco fermenting organisms agricultural authorities again owe a debt of gratitude to these distinguished investigators whose labors have discovered the art of imprisoning the microorganisms which play such an important part in the fertilization of the soil bacterial fertilizers are among the latest achievements which bacteriology has accomplished in this wonderful half century and the purchase of special varieties of bacteria to suit the requirements of particular kinds of leguminous plants is now fast becoming a mere every-day commercial transaction but efforts for the amelioration of the conditions under which plant life is carried on have not been confined to providing plants with suitable bacterial friends vigorous and successful efforts have been made to remove from their entourage those bacterial enemies and undesirable parasites which have for so long played so important a part in the crop returns of many an agriculturist for the identification and separation of the plant parasites of various kinds we have largely to acknowledge our indebtedness to american investigators and the encouragement and support which dr irwin smith amongst others has received from the government of the united states in the prosecution of these researches indicates how great is the public importance attached to them there are in america alone fifty experiment stations where plant diseases are studied whilst at a number of the colleges and universities more or less attention is given to the subject some idea of the loss occasioned to agriculturists by these plant pests may be formed by a recent announcement that the department of agriculture in queensland was prepared to offer a reward of five thousand pounds for the discovery of a means to eradicate the prickly pear disease plant pathology has not yet had a distinct chair allotted to it in any of the great universities but the subject is of such vast industrial importance that doubtless before long some seat of learning will do itself the honor to establish one and so set the example a striking instance of the advantages of taking stock so to speak of the attributes of bacteria will occur to every one in the revelation which has followed of their powers to solve one of the most knotty problems of the day the efficient manipulation of those vast subterranean rivers of sewage which honeycomb every city of the world the purification which sewage underwent by passing it through the pores of the soil or in other words by filtration was recognized about the year eighteen seventy soon after the river's pollution commissioners had begun to make their classical investigations on the land treatment of sewage but although the rapid transformation of ammonia into nitrates which followed the passage of the sewage through a few feet of soil was noted yet the mechanism of this nitrification process remained a mystery until eighteen seventy seven when two french chemists messrs schlossing and munz made the then astounding discovery that this change was dependent upon the vital energies of micro-organisms The part played by bacteria in the purification of sewage thus became an established fact, and the later experiments have been devoted to studying the necessary conditions under which the maximum amount of work is obtainable from these novel bacterial labourers.

Two different classes of bacteria are required to carry on the purification of sewage, those which flourish in the absence of air and are known as anaerobic bacteria, and those to which the presence of air is essential for the exercise of their functions, the latter being therefore called aerobic bacteria.

The work of the anaerobic labourers consists in breaking down the complex organic compounds present in sewage, whilst the completion of the process of purification is left to the aerobic varieties.

This chicken cholera microbe is particularly well suited for the work in question, inasmuch as, whilst extremely fatal to rabbits, it produces, like Loffler's bacillus, no ill effect whatever on farm stock of various kinds, and is perfectly harmless to man, so that its handling by the uninitiated is not attended with any personal danger.

BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE PART TWO

this brings us to what may be designated the human side of bacteriology that is its relation to disease and its prevention in these important departments of life the services already rendered by this infant prodigy of science can as yet be only approximately appreciated anthrax tuberculosis cholera typhoid plague influenza tetanus erysipelas are only a few of the diseases the active agents of which bacteriology has revealed to us bacteriology has however not been content to merely identify particular micro-organisms with particular diseases it has striven to devise means by which such diseases may be mastered and one of the most glorious achievements of the past sixty years is the progress which has been made in the domain of preventive medicine the classical investigations of pasteur on the attenuation of bacterial viruses such as those of chicken cholera and anthrax and his elaboration of a method of vaccination with these weakened viruses whereby the power of the disease over its victim is removed or modified are too well known to require repetition here the success which followed pasteur's researches in this direction led him to undertake that great and difficult task the prevention of rabies in the human subject a task well-nigh superhuman in its demands and one which only he could accomplish in whose life the pregnant words of a modern writer found expression il ne suffit pas de posseder une the victory over this disease which crowned a long life replete with brilliant achievements has been universally recognized and numerous institutes have arisen in all quarters of the globe for extending the benefits of this discovery for the relief of suffering humanity these pasteur or bacteriological institutes also furnish highly important centres where original research work of various kinds is carried on and the stimulus which has thus been given to experimental science in the remotest parts of the world cannot be overestimated methods for the prevention of disease have however not been confined to the elaboration and employment of modified or weakened bacterial viruses the subject has been still more recently approached from another and quite different side this new departure we also originally owe to france although its practical development has been worked out in germany it was in eighteen eighty eight that two frenchmen richet and herracourt communicated a memoir to the comte rendu of the academy of sciences describing the curious results they had obtained with rabbits purposely infected with a diseased microbe the staphylococcus some of the rabbits died after being inoculated with this micro-organism and some remained alive and they proceed to point out how it was that such different results were obtained before the inoculations were made some of the animals received injections of blood taken from a dog which a few months previously had been infected with this same microbe but had recovered the rabbits which received the dogs blood all survived the inoculations while those which did not succumbed in every case to the action of the staphylococcus so struck were the authors by these remarkable results that they repeated them and their further investigations fully confirmed those originally obtained proving that they were not en here we have the first steps in the direction of serum therapy that new treatment of disease which during the last few years has been so prominently before the public in the cure of diphtheria tetanus and other maladies and for the development of which we owe so much to the labours of bering roux kitasato and other investigators the astounding fact that the blood of animals which have been trained to artificially withstand a particular disease becomes endowed with the power of protecting other animals from that disease is only in the earliest stages of its application the results however which have already been accomplished are of so encouraging a character that the hope is justified that serum therapy is destined to revolutionize the treatment of disease one of the latest uses which has been made of this method of combating disease is the employment of serum for the cure of bubonic plague during the recent outbreak of plague in india yersin a former student and assistant at paris pasteur institute was despatched to india to superintend the administration of this new remedy and the serum he employed was that derived from horses which had been subjected to and had recovered from inoculations with the plague the treatment of snake bites by means of curative serum will be dealt with in more detail later on it only remains to cite it here as another instance of the success which is attending the new methods of protection against disease Another and highly ingenious application of serum has been brought forward by Pfeiffer, Gruber, Vidal, and others.

The fabulous capacity for multiplication possessed by them, a new generation arising in considerably less than an hour, the powers of endurance which some of them exhibit in presence of the most trying vicissitudes of heat and cold—they have been known to survive exposure lasting for seven days to a temperature of about minus two hundred degrees centigrade—the inability of starvation or desiccation to undermine their constitution, combine to render the question of the extinction of bacteria as remote as it is undesirable.

Tempted by the prospects of exploring in this newly revealed world of life, investigators rushed into the field, and the bacterial fever has been hardly less pronounced in these last years than that rush for a material golden harvest which has characterized so many enterprises in southern latitudes.

The scientific results of this microbe fever have happily, however, been of a more solid and substantial character than can be said to have followed the more tangible but sordid ventures in South African mines.

Vague hypotheses have given place to facts, and bacteria have been brought more and more within the horizon of human knowledge, thanks to the genius and untiring zeal of investigators all over the world.

By mechanical improvements in microscopes and subtle methods for coloring bacteria, enabling us to study their form with precision, by ingenious devices for supplying them with suitable food materials, or, in other words, by the creation of bacterial nurseries, providing the means for watching their growth and observing their distinctive habits and character, this important branch of the vegetable kingdom has been raised from obscurity to one of the principal places in our catalog of sciences, and bacteriology has won for itself an individual footing in the scientific curriculum of our great educational institutions, and is represented in literature by such famous serials devoted to the publication of bacterial and allied researches as the Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, the Zentralblatt für Bacteriology, the Zeitschrift für Hygiene, the Annales de l'Ingénieur Experimentale, and other well-known journals which constitute an essential but ever-increasing burden upon the library shelves as well as pocket of the investigator.

Museums of bacteria have been established, where not only specimens of particular varieties of a permanent character for comparison and reference can be obtained, but living cultivations of hundreds of different microorganisms are maintained, and only those who have had the charge of bacteria can realize the enormous amount of skilled labor involved in the catering for such a multitude, in which individual likes and dislikes in regard to diet and treatment must, if success is to be secured, be as carefully considered as is necessary in the case of the most delicate and highly pampered patient.

Wine and tobacco manufacturers, on application, may respectively obtain the bacterial means of transforming the crudest must into the costliest claret and the coarsest tobacco into the most fragrant Havana.

Already considerable progress has been made in the isolation of particular varieties of wine yeast, whilst highly encouraging results have been obtained by Schusslind and others in the separation of various valuable tobacco-fermenting organisms.

The fabulous capacity for multiplication possessed by them, a new generation arising in considerably less than an hour The powers of endurance which some of them exhibit in presence of the most trying vicissitudes of heat and cold—they have been known to survive exposure lasting for seven days to a temperature of about minus two hundred degrees centigrade—the inability of starvation or desiccation to undermine their constitution, combine to render the question of the extinction of bacteria as remote as it is undesirable.

Tempted by the prospects of exploring in this newly revealed world of life, investigators rushed into the field, and the bacterial fever has been hardly less pronounced in these last years than that rush for a material golden harvest which has characterized so many enterprises in southern latitudes.

The scientific results of this microbe fever have happily, however, been of a more solid and substantial character than can be said to have followed the more tangible but sordid ventures in South African mines.

Vague hypotheses have given place to facts, and bacteria have been brought more and more within the horizon of human knowledge, thanks to the genius and untiring zeal of investigators all over the world.

By mechanical improvements in microscopes and subtle methods for coloring bacteria, enabling us to study their form with precision, by ingenious devices for supplying them with suitable food materials, or, in other words, by the creation of bacterial nurseries, providing the means for watching their growth and observing their distinctive habits and character, this important branch of the vegetable kingdom has been raised from obscurity to one of the principal places in our catalogue of sciences, and bacteriology has won for itself an individual footing in the scientific curriculum of our great educational institutions, and is represented in literature by such famous serials devoted to the publication of bacterial and allied researches as the Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, the Zentralblatt für Bakteriologie, the Zeitschrift für Hygiene, the Annali di Igiene Sperimentale, and other well-known journals which constitute an essential but ever-increasing burden upon the library shelves as well as pocket of the investigator.

Museums of bacteria have been established, where not only specimens of particular varieties of a permanent character for comparison and reference can be obtained, but living cultivations of hundreds of different microorganisms are maintained, and only those who have had the charge of bacteria can realize the enormous amount of skilled labor involved in the catering for such a multitude, in which individual likes and dislikes in regard to diet and treatment must, if success is to be secured, be as carefully considered as is necessary in the case of the most delicate and highly pampered patient.

Wine and tobacco manufacturers, on application, may respectively obtain the bacterial means of transforming the crudest must into the costliest claret and the coarsest tobacco into the most fragrant Havana.

Already considerable progress has been made in the isolation of particular varieties of wine yeast, whilst highly encouraging results have been obtained by Schusslind and others in the separation of various valuable tobacco-fermenting organisms.

The air of the country is far freer from microbial life than that of cities, whilst open spaces, such as those afforded by the London parks, are paradises of purity compared with the streets and their attendant bacterial slums.

that it is no exaggeration to describe streets from the bacterial point of view as slums is to be gathered from the fact that much less than a thimbleful of that dust which is associated with the blustering days of march and the scorching pavements of summer may contain from nine hundred to one hundred and sixty millions of bacteria but investigators have not been content to merely quantitatively examine street dust in addition to estimating the numerical strength of these bacterial dust battalions the individual characteristics of their units have been exhaustively studied and the capacity for work beneficent or otherwise possessed by them has been carefully recorded the qualitative discrimination of the bacteria present in dust has resulted in the discovery of amongst other disease germs the consumption bacillus the lockjaw or tetanus bacillus bacteria associated with diphtheria typhoid fever pulmonary affections and various septic processes such is the appetizing menu which dust furnishes for our delectation There can be no doubt, therefore, that dust forms a very important distributing agent for microorganisms.

Dust particles, aided by the wind, being to bacteria what the modern motor car, with its benzene or electric current, is to the ambitious itinerant of the present day.

Attached to dust, bacteria get transmitted with the greatest facility from place to place, and hence the significance of their presence in dust.

Mention has been made of the fact that the germs of typhoid fever have been discovered in dust, and the belief in the possibility of this disease being spread by dust is gaining ground.

An interesting case in point is afforded by an outbreak of typhoid fever which occurred in Athens a few years ago, and in which the starting point or nucleus was discovered to be a group of laborers who were engaged upon excavating the soil in a street through which a sewer had once been taken.

the epidemic subsequently spread to those districts of the city swept by the prevailing wind which passed over the place where the soil had been turned up and exposed m bambart who brought his observations before the international congress of hygiene at budapest was convinced from the inquiries he made that this outbreak of typhoid was due to the disturbance of the soil and the dissemination by means of the wind of typhoid dust particles to certain parts of the city that this hypothesis is by no means without experimental justification is shown by the properties possessed by the typhoid bacillus in regard to its vitality in soil which have been discovered thus numerous investigators have studied the important question of the behaviour of this microorganism in soil and have found that it can exist over periods extending from three to twelve or more months in the ground this property of the typhoid bacillus may possibly explain the appearance over and over again of typhoid fever in particular localities suggesting that the bacteria had become indigenous in the soil dr muyas of heligoland describes an epidemic of typhoid fever in the island concerning which he made a most searching and elaborate inquiry it appears that a case of typhoid occurred and was concealed from the medical authorities so that no steps for disinfection could be taken in the first instance and, following the primitive custom which prevails on the island, the dejecta was thrown over and upon the cliffs, this being the usual method of disposing of sewage.

Ample opportunity was thus given for its desiccation and subsequent distribution as dust.