The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1902-04-05
SOME BENIGN MICROBES.
MANS INDEBTEDNESS TO HELP.
ERS HIS EYES CANNOT SEE,
Such Good Servants That Without
Them Life Would be impossible For
Week-Gunpowder We Owe to
Microbes-Harnessing These Evil
GroWths.

|
Week-Gunpowder We Owe to
Microbes-Harnessing These Evil
GroWths.
Microbes kill about fifteen million
human beings q year. Every one who
dies of smallpox, fever, plague. con-
sumption or any other of the long list
of diseases known to humanity is kill
ed by microbes of various degrees of
malignance. So it seems at first that
the greatest boon which could be con-
| ferred upon the human race would be
| the abolition of microbes from the
face of this planet. If this could be
actually accomplished and all mi
! crObeS wiped out in q moment infec-
| tious diseases would certainly disaD-
pear, but so also would a good many
| other things. Like fire. microbes are
| bad masters, but, on the other hand,
| such good servants that without them
| life would be impossible for a week,
! declares a writer in the Washington
| Times.
| Ever since the first farmer turned
cream into butter man has been max
ing microbes work for him. A mi
crobe shaped like little rod ferments
cream, and without it no amount Of
shaking Or churnins would turn the
cream into butter. A similar microbe
converts curd into cheese. The but
ter and cheese microbes must have
| air, ard cheese, like Roquefort and
Gruyere differ in favor from having
been exposed to the air for a longer
or shorter time.
Bakers would be badly off indeed il
millions Of slaves in the way of mi
crobes were not ready to work for
them. A morsel Of yeast is put into
a mixture Of -four and water, and
masses Of little workers Immediately
turn to and convert the starch of the
flour into sugar, and-when this is
done-the sugar into alcohol and car
bonic acid gas. The gas rises, and
turns the stOdgy dough into light
sponge. leaving the baker nothing to
do but mould his loaves and put them
into the oven.
ways toiling away turning cider or
wine into vinegar for our pickles and
salads. Mother of vinegar" as this
little creature is known, looks, when
magnified, like series of tiny chains
with rather long links. 1t does it's
work quite unaided. All it asks is to
be kept from great cold. Vinegar
makers usually put 100 pints of vine
gar into barrel, with ten pints of
wine. In a week this is all vinegar.
Ten pints are drawn off, ten pints of
fresh wine added, and the work be-
gins anew.
Gunpowder seems an odd thing to
owe to microbes; but gunpowder
could not be made without saltpetre,
and saltpetre is the result Of the long
continued industry of millions Of mi
crobes. This special microbe feeds on
decomposing animal matter, and.
where there is any potash near by,
produces saltpetre. All those enorm-
GUS beds of saltpetre, which made
millionaires of Chilean miners like the
late Col. North, could never have ex-
listed but for this particular microbe.
Saltpetre, or nitre, in some form is
absolutely necessary for the growth
OF plants, so here again, the microbe
is doing good work for the farmer. A
certain kind ,f nicrobe is so fond of
nitrogen that it steals 1t from the air |
A field of wheat, the soil of which has |
grows magnificently. and produces
splendid crops. The farmer C the fu- |
ture will carry his fertilization to his
farm in small glass bottle, instead |
of hauling It by the ton with heavy
horses and carts.
A freshly ,ut piece of chalk taken
from a chalkpit with all possible pre-
cautions, to exclude air germs. furn-
ishes numbers Of living microbes 1t
is now believed that we owe all the |
huge existing beds Of that very useful |
substance to microbe. If this is the
case, house builders would have had
no line, and consequently no mortar
but for this busy form of invisible
life.
Now that every existing disease,
from leprosy down to boil, has been
found to result from the misdrected
energy of some microbe, science has
harnessed these evil growths, dwarfed
them, and is using them to fight their
parents. Two centuries ago Turkish
doctors were making the small poX
microbes help them, though at that
time 10 one had ever neard of a mi
crobe Lady Mary Wortley Montague
wrote home to England from Belgrade
in the year 1718, telling how her boy
had been inoculated for small pox.
That was, of course, long before Jen-
ner had discovered that cowpox mi
crobes were just as good as and much
less dangerous for smallpox than were
the smallpox microbes themselves.
Vaccination having proved such an
immense success, Pasteur and others
considered that all diseases might
possibly be fought in the same kind
Of way. Pasteurs most famous ex-
periments have been for the cure of
hydrophobia. This terrible form of
madness is caused by poison inocu-