GERMS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1269, 12 April 1878, Page 3

GERMS.

Professor Tync|all lectured lately at the London Institution upon Glenns, The following is the “Times” report of hia remarks Professor Tyndall said that within ten minutes’ walk of a little cottage which he has recently built in the Alps there is a small lake fed by the melted snows of the upper mountains. During the early weeks of summer no trace of life is to be discerned in this water, but invariably towards the end of July or beginning of August swarms of tailed organisms are seen enjoying the sun’s warmth along the shallow margins of the lake, and rushing with audible patter into the deeper water at the approach of danger. The origin of this periodic crowd of living things is by no means obvious. For years he has never noticed in the lake either an adult frog or tb,e smallest fragment of frog’s spawn, so that were he not otherwise informed, hp should have found the conclusion of Mathiolea natural one—namely, that tadpoles are generated in lake mud by the vivifying action of the sun. The checks which experience alone can furnish being absent, the spontaneous generation of animals quite as high as the frog in the scale of being was assumed for ages as a fact. For nearly twenty centuries after Aristotle men found no ditliculty in believing in cases of spontaneous generation which would now be regarded as. monstrous by the most fanatical supporters of the doctrine. Kedi, in 1668, ' by careful experiments, destroyed the belief in the spontaneous generation of maggots in putrid meat. Pbe combat was continued by Yallisnieri, Schwammevdam, and Reaumur, who succeeded in banishing the notion of spontaneous generation from the scientific minds of their day. As regards the complex organisms they dealt with the notion was banished for ever. By the discovery of the microscope, revealing a world of life formed of individuals so minute —so close, as it were, to the ultimate particles of mutter—as to suggest an easy passage from atoms to organisms, revived the dying doctrine. Dr. Tyndall now traced its support by Buffon and Needham (1748), and the, experiments with a contrary tendency of Spallanzani (1779) of Schulze (18116), Schwann Uclmhi'li/,, Schvoeder, and You Dusch. In 1859 Pouohet, a vigorous and ardent writer, strongly influenced opinion in favour of spontaneous generation. In view the multitudes of moles required to produce the observed results, he ridiculed the assumption that there are atmospheric germs. i( there were, indeed, said he, the -ntimhci* that are mathematically required, the air wou)d 1 e entirely obscured by 'them. Tfeo gpryq clouds .would be much thick qy thgu tl.o fain clouds. ! But hqd Pouqhet known that the blueness of the ethpreal sky is actually due to the suspension of innumerable particles in the ail* upon which the sun shines, he would hardly have ventured on this line of argument. Pasteur, however, published bis classical paper in 1862, and his main position has never been shaken. He has applied the knowledge wo a froxd his inquiries to the preservation of wine- and beef }

to the manufacture of vinegar, and to Ifche staying of the plague which threatened destruction to the silk husbandry in France. Professor Lister has thanked him in a published letter for haying furnished the only principle which would have conducted the antiseptic system in surgery to a successful issue. Our knowledge has been greatly extended by Professor Cohn, of Breslau. “ No putrefaction,” he says, “ can occur in a nitrogenous substance if its bacteria be destroyed and new ones prevented from entering it.” Bacteria are the minute animals, so-called from the rod-like appearance of some of thorn, which are now thought to be at the root of disease, as well as of putrefaction. According to this view, a contagious fever may be defined as a conflict between the person smitten by it and a specific organism, which multiplies at his expense, appropriating his air 2nd moisture, disintegrating his tissues, or poisoning him by the decompositions it causes. Dr. Tyndall proceeded to refer briefly to his own studies on the subject since 1809, and more in detail to his experiments made this summer on the Bel-Alp above the Rhone Valley, the spot, 7000 ft. above the sea, being selected for the sake of the purity of the air and its freedom from organisms. In describing an actual experiment he would assume he was accompanied by some eminent and fair-minded member of the medical profession, who entertained views adverse from his, because it was obvious that to an important portion of the medical press of London he had not as yet succeeded in rendering this question clear. Sixty flasks would be filled in the manner described in the lecture with an infusion of beef, mutton, turnip, and cucumber, sterilized by boiling, and hermetically sealed. They are transported to the Alps. It is the month of July and the weather is favorable to putrefaction. At the Bel-Alp fifty-four flasks are counted out with their liquids as clear as filtered drinking water. In six flasks, however, the infusion is found muddy. On examination it is discovered that every one of these has bad its fragile end broken off in the transit from London. Air has entered the flasks and muddiness is the result. Examined with a pocket lens, or ever, with a microscope of insufficient power, nothing is seen in the muddy liquid; but regarded with a magnifying power of 1000 diameters, what an astonishing appearance does it present! Leeuwenhoek estimated the population of a single drop of stagnant water at 500,000,000 ; probably the population of our turbid infusion would bo this ten times multiplied. The field of the microscope is crowded with organisms, some “wobbling” slowly, others shooting rapidly across the microscopic field. They dart hither and thither like a rain of minute projectiles ; they pirouette and spin so quickly round that the retention of the retinal impression transforms the little lining rod into a twirling reel. And yet the most celebrated naturalists tell us that they are vegetables. Has this multitudinous life been spontaneously generated in these six flasks, or is it the progeny of living germinal matter carried into the flask by the entering air ? If the infusions have a self-generative power, how are the sterility and consequent clearness of the fifty-four uninjured flasks to be accounted for ? It has been affirmed in support of the theory of heterogeny that the vacuum above the infusion is favorable to the production of organisms, and their absence from tins of preserved meat, fruit, and vegetables is accounted for by the hypothesis that fermentation has begun in such tins, the gases have been generated the pressure of which has stifled the incipient life and stopped its further development. But in well-preserved tins Dr. Tyndall has invariably found, not an outrush of gas, but an inrush of water, if they were perforated under water. He has noticed this in modern tins, and in tins which have been perfectly good for sixty-three years. On the other hand, he had exposed the organisms to pressure of gases without killing them. The fifty-four pellucid flasks declare against the heterogenist. The flasks are next exposed to a warm Alpine sun by day, and at night suspended in a warm kitchen. Four of them have been accidentally broken, but at the end of a month the fifty remaining flasks are found si clear as at the commencement. There is no sign of putrefaction or of life in in any of them. These flasks are diuided into two groups of twenty-three and twenty-seven respectively. The question now is whether the admission of air can liberate any generative energy in the infusions. The flasks are carried to a hayloft, and the end snipped off from the group of twenty-three. The twenty-seven flasks are borne to a ledge 200 ft. higher, from which the mountain falls away precipitously to the north-east for about 1000 ft. A gentle wind blows towards it from the north-east, across the crests and snowfields of the Bernese Oherland. The spot is, therefore, bathed in air which must have been for a good while out of contact with either animal or vegetable life. Standing carefully to the leeward of the flasks, for no dust or particle from their clothes or bodies must be blown to the flasks, the operators first singe the pliers in a spirit lamp to destroy all attached germs or organisms, and then snip off the sealed end of the flask. In this way the twenty-seven flasks are charged with clean vivifying mountain air. The fifty flasks are placed with their necks open over a kitchen stove in a temperature varying from 50deg, to 90deg. Fahrenheit, and in three days twenty-one opt of the twenty-three flasks opened on the hayloft are found to be invaded by organisms. After three weeks’ exposure to precisely the same conditions, not one of the twenty-seven flasks opened in free air had given way. No germ from the kitchen air had ascended the narrow necks, the flasks being shifted to produce this result. They are still in the Alps, as clear (the speaker doubted not) and as free from life as they were when sent off from London. Is not the conclusion, he asked, imperative that it was not the air, but something in the air which produced the effects observed in the flasks placed in the hayloft ? What is this something ? A sunbeam glinting through a chink in the roof or wall, and traversing the air of the loft, which was in free communication by ap open doorway with the outer air, shows this air to be laden with suspended dust particles. Can they have been the origin of the observed life I If so, are we not bound by all antecedent experience to regard these fruitful particles as the germs of the life observed ? Dr. Tyndall proceeded to indicate the test of what he described as one of the principal foundations of heterogeny as promulgated in this country. Ho would place before hie friend and co-inquirer, the candid medical critic before assumed, two liquids wipch, had been kept for six moptb,a in a sealed chamber exposed to. optically pure ah 1 . The one \s a mineral solution, con- , gaining" pi proper proportion all the substances which enter into the composition of bacteria, the other is an infusion of turnip. Both liquids are as clear as distilled water, and there is no trace of life in either of them. A mutton chop, over which a little water has been poured to keep its juices from drying up, has lain for three days upon aplate in a warm room. It smells offensively. Placing a drop of the fetid mutton-juice under a microscope it is found swarming with the bacteria, which live by putrefaction, and without which no putrefaction can occur. With a speck of the swarming liquid, the clear mineral solution and tlie clear turnip infuddn are each inoculated. In twenty-jjouV hours the transparent liquid;, have become turbid throughout, and of being barren as at first, they arc teeming with life. The experiment is now varied. Opening the back-door of another closed chamber which has contained for months the pure mineral solution and the pure turnip infusion, into each is dromv'd a small pinch of laboratory dust. tii’ei is tardier than when the .pea k of putrid liquid was employed. In throe days, however, aider it ; infection’ 1 Vifli t.lic dust., the turnip infusion 5,3 muddy A and a'.farming as before with bacteria. But what about the mineral solution, which in the first experiment behaved in a manner undid inguiahable IVom the turnip juice ? At the end, of three days, at the end of three weeks, it is innocent of bacterial life. While both liquids are able to feed the bacteria, and to enable them to increase anot, multiply after they have been once fully de-’ veh'ped, only one of the liquids' is able to develop the germinal: dust of the air into active bacteria; Tlje mineral solution, to take am illustration from higher life, egn feed the chick, hut cannot develop tjhe egg. Bui this

is not the inference which has been drawn from experiments with the mineral solution. Seeing its ability to nourish bacteria when once inoculated with the living active organism, and observing that no bacteria appeared in the solution after long exposure to the air, the inference was drawn that neither bacteria nor their germs existed in the air. Throughout Germany the ablest literature is infected with this error. The deathpoint of bacteria is another important subject. The experiments already recorded show that there is a marked difference bet ween the dry germinal matters of the air, and the wet, soft, and active bacteria of the putrefying organic liquids. The one can be luxuriantly bred in the saline solution, the others refuse to be born there, while both of them are copiously developed in a sterilised turnip infusion. If we boil our muddy mineral solution, with its swarming bacteria, for five minutes, u;t one of these escapes destruction in the sett -ucculent condition in which they exist in the solution. The same is true of the turnip infusion if it In inoculated with the living bacteria only—the aerial dust being carefully excluded. Hut the case is entirely different when we inoculate our turnip infusion with the desiccated germinal matter afloat in the air. Ur, Tyndall proceeded to explain the system of killing germs by boiling a liquid repeatedly for a short time. Those which are not killed begin to sprout, and are destroyed at the next boiling, when they are in their most tender, helpless, and unprotected condition.

DEFENCE. To the Editor of the Globe. Sib, —It is a great satisfaction to read the cool business-like letter signed “R. J. S. Harman,” in your issue of Ist April. Now let the public take up Mr Harman’s common-sense, and follow it thus:—There are—--3 million pounds of property in Lyttelton. 5 „ „ „ in Christchurch. 8 „ „ „ in Dunedin. 5 „ „ „ in Wellington. 5 „ „ „ in Auckland. And then travel along the sea-coast of all New Zealand, then Tasmania, then all Australia, then Polynesia ; then lay down the great truth : —lf one of these places is to be defended, then they all must be ; then ascertain how many millions it will take for fortifications ; then lay down the truth, that all these fortifications would be useless, because as soon as the ships got outside, they would be attacked by shoals of privateers, swarming in every sea. Then, as we see by the Sydney papers, look at the Bazan, the Hazbamak, the Bismark, Sho, and three other Russian vessels, leaving Namasska (Japan) for New Zealand. The read the lying Russian telegrams upside down this way—“ The Japanese Government, viewing with alarm Russian Pacific growth, are building four war steamers at Osawaka.” This telegram should read—“ The Japanese Government have a secret treaty with Russia to attack the thinly-peopled colonies of the South Pacific, they have “ one war vessel in Sydney taking notes, others ready to join the Russians, and are building four more to destroy New Zealand.” Now let us remeber that my joke has come true—the Russians are in Gallipoli and inStamboul, their armies join from StamboultoErzeroum, they have a treaty offensive and defensive with all the Mohammedan Powers, they can, if wanted, bring a fleet of thirty sail into these waters with a force of 15,000 men—Mohammedans and Japanese, and Chinese, Ac., &c. The English fleet is scattered, in separate ships, all over the Pacific, and can be easily beaten in detail —for “ concentration is the soul of war.” Meanwhile, why do all those states alongside of us sit so peacefully looking on —Chili (1,800,000), Argentine Republic, Central Americans, Mexico, Peru (1,200,000), Brazil, United States, Ac., Ac. ? because they are free from political union with the barbarous races of Europe, who having lost their Christianity, have mistaken “ murder for civilisation,” “war for glory,” and “folly for wisdom. Yours, Ac., J. W. TREADWELL.