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BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE


BY

MRS. PERCY FRANKLAND

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY; HONORARY MEMBER OF BEDFORD
COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON;

JOINT AUTHOR OF "MICRO-ORGANISMS IN WATER," "THE LIFE OF PASTEUR,"
ETC.


    "Spirits, when they please,
    Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
    And uncompounded is their essence pure,
    Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
    Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
    Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
    Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
    Can execute their aery purposes,
    And works of love or enmity fulfil."

    MILTON.


LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1903

_All rights reserved_




Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with
underscores; _italics_. The cover of this ebook was created by the
transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain.




PREFACE


The title of this little volume sufficiently explains its contents; it
only remains to add that much of the text has already appeared from
time to time in the form of popular articles in various magazines. It
has, however, been carefully revised and considerably added to in
parts where later researches have thrown further light upon the
subjects dealt with.

    G. C. FRANKLAND

    NORTHFIELD, WORCESTERSHIRE,
    _November, 1902_




CONTENTS


                                                                 PAGE

BACTERIOLOGY IN THE VICTORIAN ERA                                   1

WHAT WE BREATHE                                                    34

SUNSHINE AND LIFE                                                  65

BACTERIOLOGY AND WATER                                             93

MILK DANGERS AND REMEDIES                                         118

BACTERIA AND ICE                                                  149

SOME POISONS AND THEIR PREVENTION                                 168




BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE




BACTERIOLOGY IN THE VICTORIAN ERA


A little more than sixty years ago the scientific world received with
almost incredulous astonishment the announcement that "beer yeast
consists of small spherules which have the property of multiplying,
and are therefore a living and not a dead chemical substance, that
they further _appear_ to belong to the vegetable kingdom, and to be in
some manner intimately connected with the process of fermentation."

When Cagniard Latour communicated the above observations on yeast to
the Paris Academy of Sciences on June 12, 1837, the whole scientific
world was taken by storm, so great was the novelty, boldness, and
originality of the conception that these insignificant particles,
hitherto reckoned as of little or no account, should be endowed with
functions of such responsibility and importance as suggested by
Latour.

At the time when Latour sowed the first seeds of this great gospel of
fermentation, started curiously almost simultaneously across the Rhine
by Schwann and Kuetzing, its greatest subsequent apostle and champion
was but a schoolboy, exhibiting nothing more than a schoolboy's truant
love of play and distaste for lessons. Louis Pasteur was only a lad of
fifteen, buried in a little town in the provinces of France, whose
peace of mind was certainly not disturbed, or likely to be, by rumours
of any scientific discussion, however momentous, carried on in the
great, far-distant metropolis. Yet, some thirty and odd years later,
there was not a country in the whole world where Pasteur's name was
not known and associated with those classical investigations on
fermentation, in the pursuit of which he spent so many years of his
life, and which have proved of such incalculable benefit to the world
of commerce as well as science.

Thanks to Pasteur, we are no longer in doubt as to the nature of yeast
cells; so familiar, in fact, have we become with them, that at the
dawn of the twentieth century we are able to select at will those
particular varieties for which we have a predilection, and employ
those which will produce for us the special flavour we desire in our
wines or in our beers.

Large and splendidly-equipped laboratories exist for the express
purpose of studying all kinds and descriptions of yeasts, for finding
out their characteristic functions, and cultivating them with all the
tenderness and care that a modern gardener bestows upon the rarest
orchids.

All this is now an old story, but some sixty years ago the great
battle had yet to be fought which was to establish once and for all
the dependence of fermentation upon life, and vanquish for ever those
subtle arguments which so long refused to life any participation in
the work of fermentation and other closely allied phenomena.

When, however, Pasteur finally cleared away the debris of
misconception which had so long concealed from view the vital
character of the changes associated with these processes, the
bacterial ball, if we may so call it, was set rolling with a will, and
information concerning these minute particles of living matter was
rapidly gathered up from all directions.

The recognition so long refused to bacteria was now ungrudgingly
given, for it was realised at last that, in the words of M. Duclaux,
"Whenever and wherever there is decomposition of organic matter,
whether it be the case of a weed or an oak, of a worm or a whale, the
work is exclusively performed by infinitely small organisms. They are
the important, almost the only, agents of universal hygiene; they
clear away more quickly than the dogs of Constantinople or the wild
beasts of the desert the remains of all that has had life; they
protect the living against the dead. They do more; if there are still
living beings, if, since the hundreds of centuries the world has been
inhabited, life continues, it is to them we owe it."

Fortunately, the provisions made by Nature for the preservation of the
bacterial race are of so lavish a description that no fear need be
entertained that this useful and indispensable world of life will be
wiped out. The fabulous capacity for multiplication possessed by them
(a new generation arising in considerably less than an hour), the
powers of endurance which some of them exhibit in presence of the most
trying vicissitudes of heat and cold (they have been known to survive
exposure lasting for seven days to a temperature of about -200 deg. C.),
the inability of starvation or desiccation to undermine their
constitution, combine to render the question of the extinction of
bacteria as remote as it is undesirable.

Tempted by the prospects of exploring in this newly-revealed world of
life, investigators rushed into the field, and the bacterial fever has
been hardly less pronounced in these last years than that rush for a
material golden harvest which has characterised so many enterprises in
southern latitudes.

The scientific results of this microbe fever have happily, however,
been of a more solid and substantial character than can be said to
have followed the more tangible but sordid ventures in South African
mines. Vague hypotheses have given place to facts, and bacteria have
been brought more and more within the horizon of human knowledge,
thanks to the genius and untiring zeal of investigators all over the
world.

By mechanical improvements in microscopes, and subtle methods for
colouring bacteria, enabling us to study their form with precision, by
ingenious devices for supplying them with suitable food materials, or,
in other words, by the creation of bacterial nurseries, providing the
means for watching their growth and observing their distinctive habits
and character, this important branch of the vegetable kingdom has been
raised from obscurity to one of the principal places in our catalogue
of sciences, and Bacteriology has won for itself an individual footing
in the scientific curriculum of our great educational institutions,
and is represented in literature by such famous serials devoted to the
publication of bacterial and allied researches as the _Annales de
l'Institut Pasteur_, the _Centralblatt fuer Bakteriologie_, the
_Zeitschrift fuer Hygiene_, the _Annali d'Igiene Sperimentale_, and
other well-known journals which constitute an essential but
ever-increasing burden upon the library shelves as well as pocket of
the investigator.

Museums of bacteria have been established where not only specimens of
particular varieties of a permanent character for comparison and
reference can be obtained, but living cultivations of hundreds of
different micro-organisms are maintained; and only those who have had
the charge of bacteria can realise the enormous amount of skilled
labour involved in the catering for such a multitude, in which
individual likes and dislikes in regard to diet and treatment must, if
success is to be secured, be as carefully considered as is necessary
in the case of the most delicate and highly pampered patient.

Bacteria, by means of these depots, can, in fact, be bought or
exchanged by collectors with as much facility as postage stamps, with
the all-important difference that this collecting of bacteria is not a
mere mania or speculation, but serves a most useful purpose.

To the busy investigator who cannot afford either the time or space in
which to maintain a large bacterial family, it is of immense
convenience to be able to obtain at a moment's notice a trustworthy
culture, say, of typhoid or tuberculosis, or specimens of obscurer
origin from air or water for purposes of investigation. These
bacterial cultures are all guaranteed pure, free from contamination or
admixture with other and alien micro-organisms, and are strictly what
they are represented to be. Although such a declaration is attached to
many commodities at the present day with ludicrous incongruity