Morning journal and courier., 1891-04-06

Ao eiio I<uitoi oi tHe JOURNAL AND SOUH1Ehs
 Professor Chittenden's lecture on Bacte- ria, given on Tuesday of last week, fol- lowed the lines of theory which still comes far short of sound science on this very interesting subject. What, for eI- ample, can be more confusing than the two statements, that bacteria are vegeta- bles, and that they dart about with the agility of a fishs Huxley and Tyndall had spat about bacteria some time since, the former insisting on their vegetable charac ter, and the latter scofing at the very idea of vegetables darting about like lightning. Professor Chittenden vegetables as fishes darting about, and he even goes so far as to state that these vegetables "swim and dart about" by means of little hair like appendages or cilia-" This is worse than the case of the tail wagging the dog. It is tail, or & lot of tails, wagging vegetable. The terms ''swim" and "agili- ty of a fish," used by Professor Chitten- den, are most inadequate to express the kind of motion of these vegetables when the cilia-tails get in their most effectual wagging. Quick as lightning is the more accurate description, used by Tyndall and H. J. Clark, for example; not indeed in all cases, but in notably important ones. Professor Clark describes how such tails, "upon the least disturbance, retract their length down almost to nothing, with a lightning like rapidity; even while you are looking at them there is a sudden shock, and they are gone." It would seem desir- able to know fully and accurately about these tails, how they are made and how they are operated, before asserting of them that they wag the vegetables to which they are attached. Moreover, the correct account of the matter includes statements such as these from De Bary's authoritative textbook:
 "Many observations under the most fla tect in these forms anything like distinct organ of locomotion;" and again;
 "It is, to say the least, questionale whether they [the cilial function as organs of locomotion, considering the irregulari- ty of their occurrence in the forms which are endowed with motion"
 De Barry states also that the darting mo- ton of bacteria ''is accompanied with TO- tation round their longitudinal axis" If that is true, in some cases at least, and if these singular motions take place, tail or no tail, the statement that the tails wag the vegetable would seem to be very ques- tionable science. It is, in fact, not sci ence at all, but a nasty guess of made quate judgment upon the facts, the absur- | dity of which ought to be perfectly mani fest.
 The theory, moreover, that bacteria, as such, that is as living things, cause dis ease, is in the same category of questiona- | ble science. Happily, the bacteriologists | are enough out of the woods to see that it | is not as living things that bacteria are connected with disease. Dr. A. B. Grif- | fiths, in a recent English work, points out l the fact that the disease is not caused by ] the vital activity of the bacteria. He de- | clares that the true cause of the disease is
 product which he says the bacteria have l the power of manufacturing. So Profes 1 sor Chittenden says that leach germ pro | duces peculiar substance, a most deadly | poison, which is the real cause of the dis
 ease.' The guess here, for it is nothing
 more than guess, that the bacteria man
 ufacture the disease causing poison, is { guess in the dark of utter ignorance, ant
 very poor guess. It is not so manifestly
 absurd as the theory of the vegetable
 wagged by their tails, but it is not only
 improved, but impossible of belief upon
 sound scientific scrutiny of the facts
 The incontestable facts are that the ''crit
 ters" are vegetables, in very many cases a l hot, hor toll.
 that whether they have tails or not the,
 appear darted about, rotated and multi
 piled by fssion with amazing rapidity, ant
 that various forms of peculiar disease
 promoting poison are developed in them
 But the fact that ''ptomaines or putrefac
 tive alkaloids," which cause disease, mak ; their appearance, does not prove that tn
 bacteria ':manufacture'' the ptonaines
 It is unscientific to the last degree to as
 sume that the bacteria, appearing as mi
 croscopic vessels containing poison, hay , manufactured the poison. On the contri l ry it is supposable that the alkaloid DO son in question has entered the living sy tenn, in which the bacteria appear, and hs become aggregated in them. One of th
 worst of these poisons is not unlike u
 venom of the cobra in deadly effect. , the venom of the cobra some intensel 3 toxic substance is concentrated, and if W : understood how that substance gets int the living system of the cobra, and b . comes concentrated as it does, the lessc 7 would be step in the direction of real a | scientific knowledge of the bacteria. L a yet there is no such knowledge. Bacter ! ology is thus far hardly more than fl u ton, like that of girl-children with the t dolls The whole question of the bacter s has yet to be correctly studied, and b
 1,o
 marvels of liveliness, and of multiple
 tion, which we observe, do not imply 0 a ganic germs, but only matter which u
 causes of animation, whatever they ar e play upon with the animating and gro' r. ing effect which our microscopes show e us. If, for any hypothesis, we say tn the causes of animation are the oxygen
 respiration and the electricity which tn }. oxygen can discharge into protoplas !. masses, then what we see as living thin |. are merely lively protoplasm specks, al if their multiplication with lightning like T '' pidity is mere result of the electrical a 1t imation which makes them lively.
 le In the present state even of scienti d knowledge this view of the matter is il o mensely more probable than the livi 10 germ theory. The physicists, unhappil ss are about as ignorant here as the physiol l. gists. The physics of candle flame or
 coal fire are neither known nor taught,
 though they lie at the foundation of t r. most important knowledge within t a whole realm of science, that of the acti, .5 of oxygen in nature-the maker of f o and maintainer of life. In one of the bt W popular science volumes ever write 'u however, there may be picked out an WY position of the facts of combustion of c.
 bon, which sets ajar the gates of tr y view. I refer to Cooke's New Chemistl to In speaking of carbonic dioxide Coo Id comes very near to saying that oxygen m alive and eats the carbon of coal, charco
 &cc. Thus he says: 'In the process y burning, the oxygen gas appears to abso y. charcoal, and the resulting gas we;g D. more than the oxygen by the exact weig MI of the charcoal consumed"
 ga The carbonic dioxide, says Cooke,
 the chief product of the burning of co ae every ton of coal burned yields three a lr two-third tons of this gas; and no fact I chemistry is better established than u
 every molecule of this gas consists of c
 atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygeI it's This means that to burn ton of carb F. requires two and two-third tons of oxye .,' gas, every molecule of which Ca two-at' H. molecule) eats up an atom of carbt ad The carbonic acid gas is in fact nothi on but oxygen loaded with carbon, .evt
 rno1anu1e of fha ovvno,, Ay;nr