Preventive medicine.--Bacteria in surgery.--Prevention by
inoculation.--Limits of preventive medicine.--Curative medicine.
--Drugs--Vis medicatrix naturae.--Antitoxines and their use.--
Conclusion.





THE STORY OF GERM LIFE.


CHAPTER I.

BACTERIA AS PLANTS.


During the last fifteen years the subject of bacteriology
[Footnote: The term microbe is simply a word which has been coined
to include all of the microscopic plants commonly included under
the terms bacteria and yeasts.] has developed with a marvellous
rapidity. At the beginning of the ninth decade of the century
bacteria were scarcely heard of outside of scientific circles, and
very little was known about them even among scientists. Today they
are almost household words, and everyone who reads is beginning to
recognise that they have important relations to his everyday life.
The organisms called bacteria comprise simply a small class of low
plants, but this small group has proved to be of such vast
importance in its relation to the world in general that its study
has little by little crystallized into a science by itself. It is