nursing at its mother's breast is a spectacle too vulgar and indecent to be thought of, and yet they manifest the fondest affection for their "dear little" poodles.

Kate Field says that "a woman who aims to be fashionable must neglect home, husband and children, put away comfort and convenience, be a first class hypocrite and a good slanderer, and at the end of ten years break down and be come a physical wreck."

Such are the women of fashion, suffering and dying by thousands annually in consequence of the violations of the inexorable laws of nature; they exite our pity, but we are unable to render any permanent relief.

"They purchase pain with all that joy can give

And die of nothing but a rage to live."

The customs and habits among men are yet more pernicious and criminal.

They contract with avidity the most loathsome and fatal diseases, and "visit their sins" upon their innocent posterity; they drink themselves into insanity, suicide, delirium tremens, chronic alcoholism and liver diseases, they gormandize themselves into dyspepsia, gout, liver and renal diseasesthey assassinate, murder and maim one another.

Both men and women by thousands, annually destroy their health and lives by the opium habit and the voluntary use of the most poisonous drugs, etc. Men and women who thus wantonly violate the laws of health have little regard for civil laws; and from this class our asylums, prisons, jails, and alms-houses are ever filled to overflowing. Is it any wonder

then that sanitary science moves so slowly?

One of the chief causes that handicap the advancement of sanitary science, and the one most difficult to remedy, is found in diseases of heredity, such as cancer, scrofula, consumption, epilepsy, insanity, etc.

These hitherto incurable diseases are caused by a violation of the laws of inheritance.

To this is justly attributed the fearful death rate of children.

Could we dry the streams of death, misery, woe and crime, that flow from the almost universal violation of this law, we would confer upon the human race a boon, in comparison with which the great discovery of Jenner would sink into insignificance.

Stock breeders have long since found promiscuous breeding suicidal to their pecuniary interests, and have abandoned it in the rearing of dumb animals; but in the propagation of human beings, these important considerations are wholly ignored.

Should the time ever come when the entire people intelligently obey the laws of health and practice its benign principles, our present death rate will become reduced at least one half.

THE NECESSITY FOR A GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT BACTERIOLOGY MEANS.

BY W. C. BENNETT, M. D., OF MILWAUKEE.

The discovery of bacteria and their functions, and the consequent complete revolution of many lines of thought; the abandonment of existing theories and the establishment of new ones, have occured so recently and have followed each other with such rapidity, that much confusion exists in the public mind in regard to the subject, and it is just this confusion which prevents the accomplishment of the practical results which should ensue from this great discovery.

Consequently, we find the popular idea in regard to germlife is far from being at one with itself or with the truth. On the one hand there is a morbid fear of the very name bacteria, on the other there is a skepticism quite as pernicious, and it may be said in passing that the unreliable statements of the newspapers are responsible for both of these conditions. It is by the physicians that this confusion must be restored to a condition of order, that the greatest good may result.

A clear knowledge of the life history of these important organisms will go far to rid the public of an unnecessary anxiety, as well as to show them where the real danger lies, that they may avoid it. It is for the general good that the public should know what bacteriology means, and it is the duty of every physician to disseminate this knowledge among his patients whenever practicable.

It should be generally known that bacteria are minute organisms belonging to the lowest orders of plant life; that each consists of a single cell, so small that it must be magnified 400 or 500 times in order to be seen; that these minute

plants have the power of increasing in number very rapidly, when conditions are favorable, by simply dividing into two, each half becoming a fully developed organism like the original; that these plants are, like their larger relatives, some useful and some harmful; that many of these plants have the power of taking in their food and converting it into a poisonous substance, just as the deadly nightshade, planted in the same soil and inhaling the same air as its cousin, the potato, will convert its food into poison while the potato is so little harmful as to be used for food; that the poisonous substances, formed by the bacteria, when absorbed by the human economy, produce diseases, modified, among other things, by the intensity of the poison, the rapidity of its absorption, and the location of its inception.

From a strictly utilitarian standpoint we may roughly classify bacteria as 1. Useful; 2. Harmless or Neutral, and 3. Harmful. Judging from the sensational articles appearing from time to time in the newspapers, one would suppose that every germ was a disease-producer and that death to all microbes was a condition devoutly to be desired, but as a matter of fact the vast majority of bacteria (both as to species and numbers) are either harmless or positively beneficial, the destruction of which would be in the nature of a calamity.

Perhaps the greatest benefit which we derive from these little germs, is their assistance in the oxidation of organic matter. All dead vegetable and animal matter is acted upon by them, and the complex chemical substances of which they are composed are reduced to simpler compounds, thus rendering innocuous what might be dangerous, or at least unpleasant, and at the same time furnishing to the soil those elements without which grains and crops could not grow. It has been said that without microbes crops would be impossible (Duclaux).

Germs are a prime factor in the disposal of sewage by fil

ter-beds; they will make usable drinking water that has become contaminated with organic matter, by converting the dangerous organic matter into harmless nitrites and nitrates; they cause the ripening of cheese; they produce the fine flavors in butter as well as some that are not so fine, and it is probable that at times bacteria are an aid in the digestion of food. At any rate there are 331 described species of bacteria which are useful, or at least harmless, and only 158 species which are known to produce disease, and comparatively few of these affect the human family (Sternberg). moreover, since the conditions for existence of the diseaseproducing germs are not abundantly supplied, they have on the whole a rather hard life of it, and it is not to be wondered at, that when the opportunity presents itself, they improve it to the utmost.

And

But after all it is the harmful germ with which we are most concerned. The useful germ we accept, like air and sunlight, as a matter of course. The harmful germs, after evading every effort for their discovery for centuries, are rapidly being isolated, their peculiarities studied, and their mode of death established.

Measures

It was found that certain diseases, such as typhus, depended, for their propagation, on the presence of filth. were taken to remove the filth and typhus disappeared. It is known that typhoid fever, malaria, cholera and certain diarrheal diseases are produced by the presence of germs in drinking water and that if such water is boiled, these diseases will vanish. It is known that the sputum of a tuberculous patient when allowed to dry will infect others, and that if the sputum is burned a great portion of the danger is avoided. It is known that air-borne diseases are, as a rule, borne but a short distance, and that if a patient suffering from them be isolated, and if all discharges and articles of clothing, etc., with which the patient has been in contact, are disinfected, that the danger of others contracting the disease is compara