, 1893-06-03

Union on Thursday evening. 1t is an attempt
to put some facts which ought to be very
widely known into q very simple form.
Having been invited to speak to you this
evening, ] take as nv subject Cholera" AL
though this is a religious meeting, you must
not suspect that | intend to try to brighten
you into a better life by holding up before
you the possibility that this terrible disease
may come among us; nothing of the sort
hope that, on the contrary, you will find
what | shall have to say interesting. and |
shall endeavour to make it very plain.
Before we think about the cholera itself, let
us fancy that W. are taking a walk in the
fields, You see patches Of particular plants;
you pass, lot US say,a patch OF yellow ~thistles,
a little further on you meet with another
patch Of yellow thistles, and, of course, after
you have once taken notice of these plants,
You know them again whenever you see them,
" you find, let us say, patches Of maiden
apple vine or pastures covered with guava
bushes. Whatever the plants mag be, you can
always tell them again whenever you meet
them, and there is one thing that you may
always feel sure about in connexion with
them, andthat is, that wherever you see them,
they must have grown from seeds, which
somehow or other have been brought to the
spot Now if you THU k about the diseases
that aflict mankind, you will see that, like the
plants, they are of different kinds A doctor,
for example, can tell smallpox, yellow fever,
choleI a and many other diseases, as soon as
he sees them. Besides that, many diseases
pass from one man to another, theyIare catch
ing" Long ago people have thought, when
they roticed these things, that the different
kinds Of diseases might in some way he like
the different groups of plants WHOA we NO
ticed in our walk, and, that like tho plaHts,
they came from a sort Of seeds, which could be
carried from one man to another. Some years
ago this seed idea about diseases was taken up
and studied very hard 10y a very clever French
man. He noticed that there was a disease among
fowls which killed them very quickly and could
be told wherever 1t appeared. 1t was called
chicken cholera. He got some of the sick
fowls and with strong mlgnifyinT glasses
searched for the little things which lie sus-
pected were in their blood and gave Them the
disease. and he found these little living things
(miorobos, as they are called) He not only
found them, but he got them out and grew
them in large numbers In bottles Of broth.
There these little living creatures multiplied
by sending out their seeds, eggs, spores, or
whatever they ought to be called, into the
broth. He could raise as many as no wanted,
just as you could raise a crop of yellow thistles
"a yN0A "A~ ~ P'""AhS o. ~" &io lVbCAhS
them seed there, only that he could raise his
Drop very quickly while you would have to
wait for som time for your crop of thistles.
When he had grown these little creatures
he found that if he put the point of his
lancet into the broth 40 as to take up some Of
them and then pricked a chicken with the
lancet, the chicken sickened, and perhaps died,
with all the signs of chicken cholera In
f ct no proved about that disease what people
had long suspected about many diseases, name
ly that it was caused by small creatures that
had got into the body and multiplied there.
He Continued his studies, other clever neil
took them up, and now we know for certain
that a great many diseases are caused in this
way, and we know for certain that the small
creatures of different sorts, the microbes,
have seeds or spores by which they are
spread abroad. This has been proved about
cholera by a famous German doctor, who was
sent by his Government to Egypt some years
ago, when cholera was there, and who found
in what was passed by the cholera patients a
small creature something in shape like a
comma, which has Their fore been called the
comma microbe. Wherever there is cholera
this little microbe is found.
Now let us go back to the plants in the
field. We know about them not only that they
grew from seeds, but that the seeds must have
found a suitable soil in which to grow. While