THE COMMUNITY OF ORIGIN OF DIPHTHERIA, TYPHOID FEVER AND SCARLATINA.

Abstract

It will not be expected that the writer of a paper with the above title will be a warm advocate of the theory of specific germs in the etiology of disease, it would hardly be consistent for him to evolve a little germ for each of the three diseases the same ultimate elements, even for the sake of effect. I do not wish to be understood as disparaging or discrediting the immense value which the microscope has been, and still is, to scientific medical research, but it is well enough to remember that any valuable acquisition is easily and frequently overvalued by enthusiasts. The presence in the air of minute organisms has been known for years. A century since, when the microscope was a mere plaything, Goethe in his inimitable work Faust, made Mephistopheles say, from air, water, earth, in wet, dry, hot, cold, germs by thousands evolve themselves,