BACTERIA-HELPFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 57, 8 March 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

BACTERIA-HELPFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE.

LITTLE KNOWN ORGANISMS. Perhaps one of the greatest forces at work on the earth is that of the various bacteria.' In spite of our .boasted knowledge of the various forms, we are in fact only beginning to find, out what they can do for us. Only recently have 'bacteria been considered a factor in industrial chemistry. Now they have been found, in many cases, to be a valuable chemical factor. They can frequently accomplish in the confines of a test tube what the chemist could not accomplish economically. ; except in a plant of large production covering several acres. They are responsible for our present lacquer industry, which among other things, has revolutionised motor car manufacture. ,-

The power of these organisms can be illustrated in another way, on the destructive side. Now that the chemists have told us that he can hope for no more poisonous gases than we now know we still have certain form of haccilli which can he investigated for their properties of destruction to man. In September, Professor Leonard Hill announced the discovery of a bacillus, of this type. Speaking before the Sanitary Inspectors' Association, he said: "If men were as susceptible as guinea pigs to the toxin produced by this bacillus —and there is reason to think they are — it would appear that one gram of the dry toxin would sufficie to kill 1,000,000 persons. The toxin acts if inhaled or if it falls on the eye as a powder. Recently many "experiments, carried out in England, have shown that live bacteria float about in the air as high as 13,000 feet, the limit to which the experiments were carried. There is reason to fear the uses to which such information eventually may be put.