The Monticellonian., 1899-06-23
MICROBES ARE DELICATE.
Unless the Conditions Are Just Right They Will Not Thrive
 at All.

In very interesting lecture delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, Dr Poore describes the action of the earti In relation to the preservation and de struction of contagia, pointing out thai the chemical composition of earth il constantly changing, and that its fit ness for supporting the life of the va rious micro-organisms that are founf n it varies accordingly.
 Each of these microbes presumably grows best in what one may call it's op timum conditions, and the smallest al iteration in these conditions may turf the scale and decide which among the competing organisms shall obtain the mastery. In Illustration of the GU rious eXactitude of the conditions without which certain fungi will not grow, and of their extraordinary de yelopment, whenever these conditions are fulfilled, Dr. Poore refers to the growth of mushrooms.
 Some of the larger saprophytes, ht says, such, for instance, as the com mon mushroom, require no little skill
  far more attention to exact details thar is necessary with the ordinary green eaved garden plants. We know tha' for a few weeks in the autumn they may appear in great numbers in dry pastures where horses have been fed provided that the conditions of the air as temperature, light and moisture, bt c.. .l,I II rectly the necessary conditions fai the mushroom harvest is at an end.' And it is clear that "the optimun conditions for the growth and develop ment of these short-lived and delicatt organisms must be marvelously subtle probably quite beyond the ken of tn, chemist"
 Referring then to certain diseases such, for example, as anthrax and te tanus, the germs of which are known tt grow freely in certain soils, attention ii drawn to the rarity with which men ar, attacked by them, even when working on land which has almost certainly beer infected. We are thus brought fact to face with the importance of the ex tra-corporeal phases of microbic Tiff, tn the maintenance of continuity of in lection. Unfortunately, we seem tt know but little in regard to the exac conditions under which the severa pathogenic organisms are best able tt maintain their existence in saprophyti. form. Something we know about tn, bacillus of the tuberculosis, and some thing we are beginning to know abon' that of enteTfe fever, but much mors knowledge ih this direction is badly wanted
 It is true enough, no doubt, as hal been we'll said, that the proper study of mankind is man. but this is jus what the pathoiogist must unlearn if ht would get to the bottom of the etiology and especially of the epidemiology, O infectious ailments. No longer mus he be content to study the action O the microbe within mans frame or the methods by which it brews toxins ant sets up disease, but he must trace itt life history outside, and find out wha' these infectious particles are doing and how they are living through tht long interval that sometimes lapses be tween the termination of one ease and the development of another. On, fine morning Me look out upon our pad dock and find it full of mushrooms; and another, although we know tha' the spore is present just the same there is not a mushroom to be seen It was the conditions, not the seet alone, that made them grow. And thii is a rable.-IIospital.