The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-25
LIVING WORLD OF
 COUNTLESS BILLIONS''

| Great things have small beeinnines
 A spectacle maker. Jan Leippersheirn 1 by name, living in Holland, invented
 a crude magnifying glass in 1908. An Iton von Leuwenhoek, born in Delft,
 this day 1892. improved this clumsy
 toy and evolved a compound micro
 scope which has become the most
 valuable sanitary tool yet devised by
 man. That first microscope was as
 far removed from the high-powered l instrument of today as is the modern
 American from the original caveman. Yet by this faulty means, Leuwen- hoek- naturalist. physician and botan- i 1sts discovered certain minute bodies which he called little animals He
 made drawings of these and today we
 know them for those useful friends
 and malignant enemies of man-7 bacteria. l We spend our days surrounded by i countless billions, invisible to the nak- l ed eye, silent. tireless, destroying the | living, consuming the dead, useful in
 the sciences and arts, yet often follow l ed by a, train of sickness, suffering
 and death. A curious paradox this yet bacteria are at once the greatest friends and the f1ercest foes of every living thing. Not animals, as Leuwen- hoek thought, but vegetables, bacteria i consist of two classes those which prey on living things and those which reduce to their original minerals, fluids and gases, every dead thing which they attack. They are of ,vari- ous shapes, round like marbles or straight like little sticks. They grow in clusters chains, and in pairs. They are ubiquitous The dusty air, the earth and its waters. the interior of animals and plants all contain them. IfThey cause the fermentation of foods, itLT rL7~-
 ease and some of them when killed and injected into animal protect Lit against the very disease which they. would have produced If living. Many of them live as harmless creatures in the body of animal for years, only to kill their host when the opportunity presents. Their study has given birth to a science, bacterio1ogy, one of the foundation stones of public health.
 Their mere presence does not necessarily produce disease. Recall ing the parable of the sower, some bacteria fall by the wayside, some. fall upon stony places, and some fall in good ground and bring forth the fruit of suffering, perhaps of death. A, normal, temperate life, free alike from the gluttony of idleness or, over work. the sound mind in the sound
 body, a cheerful. normal environment, there form the stony places in which bacteria take no rot. The depraved appetites of mind and body, the dark and sordid atmosphere of pe- nury, the nerve racking and strength
 undermining, these prepare the good ground.
 The great weapon against bacteria is clan1iness. The mastery over pre- mature death lies to a great measure in our own hands. Clean persons, clean cities, clean workshops and clean lives and the makers of pulp lie health. The United States Public Health Service and other sanitary bodies of this country are gradually bringing these facts home to the gem era1 public. In this way cleanliness is becoming more general, and the. span of life in America is gradually. being heightened. All of which is largely due to the microscope.