while it is certain that we are in profound ignorance of their properties and habits.
We are told by some writers[1] that the very air we breathe is absolutely teeming with germs, and that we are surrounded on all sides by an innumerable array of minute organic beings. It has also been conjectured that they are at incessant warfare among themselves, and that we form the spoil of the stronger party. Be this as it may, we are at any rate intimately bound up with, and, so to speak, at the mercy of, a world of creatures, of which we know as little as of the inhabitants of the planet Mars.
6. Yet, even here, with profound ignorance of the individual, we are not altogether unacquainted with some of the habits of these powerful predatory communities. Thus we know that cholera is eminently a low level disease, and that during its ravages we ought to pay particular attention to the water we drink. This is a general law of cholera, which is of the more importance to us because we cannot study the habits of the individual organisms that cause the disease.
Could we but see these, and experiment upon them, we should soon acquire a much more extensive knowledge of their habits, and perhaps find out the means of extirpating the disease, and of preventing its recurrence.
Again, we know (thanks to Jenner) that vaccination will prevent the ravages of small-pox, but in this in-
- ↑ See Dr. Angus Smith on Air and Rain.
