THE GERM THEORY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XIX, 30 October 1897, Page 582

THE GERM THEORY.

* How are your microbes to-day ’’ may come to lie one of the customary greetings to the sick when the latest discoveries of the bacteriologists are reduced to practical account.

As first promulgated, the germ theory was simplicity itself. For every contagious disease there is a specific germ. Destroy the micro! >e and cure the disease. Later discoveries, however, do not make the matter quite so simple. Drs. Roux and Metschmkoff and the chemist Duclaux, successor to Pasteur as director of the Pasteur Institute, have each been conducting separate experiments recently, but have reached practically the same conclusions. These men have discovered the most deadly germs in the human Issly when there was no accompanying malady. They are forced, therefore, to believe that the disease is due not to the presence of the germs, but to some diseased condition of the germ. The man is sick, in other words, because he is carrying around a whole hospital of sick bacteria, and the question is to find out what ails the microbes. This opensup anew and somewhat startling danger. Nearly every person, so these doctors think, has some of these cholera or other deadly microlies in his body most of the time. So long as they are in a healthy condition he is all right. But suppose they get sick. Well he must take his chances, lust as he has always done before this latest discovery. A GERM-PROOF HOUSE. For the latest practical application of the science of germs one must go to Japan. Dr Van der Heyden, the famous bacteriologist of Japan, has constructed a house which is described as microbe-proof, as well as airproof and dust-proof. The walls of this house are made of double glass. The panes are of large size, a half-inch thick, and are set in iron frames with about four inches space between the outer and inner surfaces. No air is admitted except through sterilizing pipes. It is first forced through cotton wool and then against a glycerine-coated plate glass. If any microbes escape this treatment they are speedily destroyed in the warm sunlight which pervades the apartments. Though the rays of the sun pass unhindered through the walls, they do not superheat the apartments, since the spaces between the glasses in the w'alls are tilled with solutions of salts which admit the light but absorb the heat. In the evening the salts radiate the heat they have gathered during the day. No fire is needed, therefore, even in freezing weather, unless several cloudy days follow in close succession. It is then supplied by heating the filtered air. The air escapes through several small openings near the roof.