GREAT DISCOVERIES.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 42, 24 May 1907, Page 7

GREAT DISCOVERIES.

SHALL WE CONQUER THE Mis . CHORE ? * Medical specialists have recently made a great number of startling and fundamentally important discoveries concerning microbes. Microbes, known also as germs, bacteria, and 'bacilli, are the cause? of practically all oases, and yet without them we cannot live. It has been proved that if a human being be kept under absolutely sterile conditions—that is to say, kept absolutely free from microbes or germs —he will die. The explanation is that the germs that swarm in normally healthy air and- enter the mouth and alimentary canal of human beings are absolutely essential to digestion and other functions of the body.

Professor Schottelius experimented on chickens, because by hatching out these creatures under gonnproof conditions he could keep them germ-free from birth. Four chickens were hatched out under these conditions. They all showed continuous hunger and ale abundantly, but they exhibited every symptom of starvation. Two of them died and the two others were ovidentally on the point of extinction. .The two survivors wore then taken out of their germ tight compartment and given food that had been mixed with bacteria from the intestines of a normal hen. They immediately gained weight and recovered. The professor concludes that the bacterial action in the intestinal canal is at least in certain cases, necessary, and that it acts in the interest of the organism. The great Pasteur had already suggested that digestion was impossible without, the aid of bacteria, but he had mot made convincing experiments Every man swarms with' bacteria, and among them are usually those of many of the deadly diseases—such as typhoid, tuberculosis, diptheria, pneumonia, etc. Within half an hour of birth there are forty million microbes or more in the mouth of a child. Professor Gary N. Calkins has calculated that bacteria would, if unchecked, quickly overload the earth and make human life impossible. “In our laboratories," he says, ‘‘under suitable conditions of food and warmth, a bacillus splits again in half an hour, and so on, and it has been estimated that a single bacillus, if given similar conditions in nature, wotdd, within a week, give rise to progeny numerous enough to fill the Atlantic Ocean.'' Why is it that bacteria or disease germs do not wipe out all life on earth ? There are many causes that operate to check them, such as lack of nourishment, the influence of their own excretions in killing them off, the resistance of the animal organism to them, and the beneficient work of little animals called protozoa in swallowing them. But the newest discovery concerning the power of the human body to resist disease germs is the existence of a substance called “opsonin” in the serum of the blood. Opsonin is the discovery of London physicians. The white corpuscles of the blood Ijive the duty of destroying disease germs, but they do not in many individuals, appear to be equal to their task uu-i less there are sufficient opsonins in the blood. These arc thought to be the product of bacteria ; but there is still some uncertainty on lids point. Our physicians, however, now measure the opsonic resistance of a man suffering from a germ disease, and if it is not sufficient they raise it up. At the London Hospital an opsonin department has been established, and some ninety cases are examined there every week.

Without the tost for opsonins the doctor works more or less in the dark, and his injection of vaccine may be doing harm instead of good. With its help ho can scarcely go wrong. Every disease having a definite bacillus which has been isolated and cultivated can be benefited in this way. Boils disappear as if bj r magic, seeming to melt away. Lupus, the bacillus of which has been identified with that of tuberculosis, succumbs more easily to the Finsen light, and Malta fever, pneumonia and many other troubles are also benefited'Science Si flings. ’ ’