THE BASIS OF IMMUNITY FROM MICROBE INFECTION.

THE

HE journal Le Progrès Médical for August 18, published in Paris, contains a partial report of the Thirteenth International Congress of Medicine, which is made up of several sections devoted to various branches of the science. Problems of immunity and related questions were taken up for consideration in the bacteriological section.

Since the congress of 1889, our knowledge of bacteriology has undergone profound changes. For about twelve years, interest has been centered, above all else, in the microbe.

For the sake of clearness, a few terms are defined at the beginning.

Alexines are substances, probably albumenoids, secreted by leucocytes, which have an important rôle in the defense of the organism against infection. They are normally present in the blood, and make resistance possible against certain affections, such as abscess, etc., without the production of specific immunization. Anticorps,

on the contrary, are produced by phagocytes only under certain pathological conditions, and for the special purpose of destroying certain bacterial poisons or certain microbes. Antitox

ines, then, are a variety of anticorps. Toxoides are toxines modified by heat and age. They are only slightly toxic, but can engender antitoxine when injected in animals.

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL IMMUNITY.

Dr. Büchner, of Munich, spoke upon the subject of immunity, in which he distinguishes natural immunity, or natural resistance, and artificial immunity. The first depends upon the presence of alexines in the fluids of the body, and also upon the power of the leucocytes to devour living and virulent bacteria, which they do by engulfing and digesting them, just as the well-known amoeba flows over and absorbs the particles upon which it subsists. The alexines of serum are produced by leucocytes, so that natural resistance may be called the function of the leucocytes. Büchner considers that alexines weaken the microbes, making them easy victims to the leucocytes, or in some cases destroy them unaided.

There are three varieties of artificial immunity -one resulting from treatment with toxines, or toxoides and toxones; a second, resulting from treatment with bacteria, and a third from treatment with specific erythrocytes. In all of these

cases the treatment results in the production of anticorps in the serum of the animal, which can combine with the toxic substance that has called it into existence. This is the principle of artificial immunity; natural resistance differs from

this in having its resisting power characterized by alexines, which are destroyed at 60° C., and which vary according to the species of animal producing them. Anticorps are more stable, and can resist a temperature of 65° C.; they do not vary according to the species of animal that produces them, but according to the preparatory

treatment.

Alexines and anticorps act in the same body at the same time; in this way, natural and artificial immunity may be associated and mutually reinforce each other.

TOXINES AND ANTITOXINES.

M. Le Pr. P. Ehrlich took up the subject of toxines and antitoxines. Toxines are products of secretions of animal or vegetable origin; their two characteristics are, for the moment, unique in biology. First, when a toxine encounters a chemically definite poison, it requires a period of incubation before manifesting its nocine action. The second characteristic is more important; toxine injected into an animal gives place to the formation of an antitoxine.

It is probable that toxines form specific combinations with protoplasm, and the products of these combinations exist normally in the blood. They may be produced in greater quantities by increased activity of the cell, and this conserves the power of producing an excess of such elements as a protection at the least menace of infection. Temporary or permanent immunity depends upon this principle.

A Plea for the Poor Hunted Microbe.

Mr. Maurice L. Johnson heads his paper in the Westminster Review Microbes: Are They Inherently Pathogenic ?" and proceeds to answer the question with an emphatic negative. He quotes a paper read by Mr. George G. Bantock, M.D., F.R.C.S. E., in March of last year, in which the doctor presents facts to show "that the modern doctrine of bacteriology is a gigantic mistake," and that these various bacilli play a beneficent rôle in the economy of nature.' The writer proceeds:

"As Dr. Bantock and other eminent authorities assure us, the germs which have come to be regarded as the causes of the most virulent diseases are constantly found swarming in perfectly healthy people, and as their decrescence is frequently attended with unfavorable results, there is good ground for believing them to be necessary and beneficent. But the misconceptions in regard to them seem to have arisen from the mistaking of an effect for a cause. For example, the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus has been looked upon as the cause of diphtheria, while it is universally

admitted that it is continually present in perfectly healthy mouths and fauces. But, of course, when an individual contracts diphtheria, all the microbes of his system, including this denizen of the fauces to which the diphtheritic stigma has been attached, must participate in the contamination and acquire the diphtheritic diathesis; so when, under such conditions, it has been taken and injected into animals and they have developed diphtheria, the false assumption has arisen that this microbe, harmless enough when taken from a healthy person, was the cause of diphtheria, because it induced the disease when taken from a diphtheritic patient, any other microbe or emanation from whom would have possessed the same pathogenic property."

Dr. Foster Palmer is cited as saying that the pathogenic microbe is powerless to cause disease in a healthy organism." Whence the writer deduces the moral that we should be more careful about maintaining the general health of the system than in hunting down the poor microbe, who is only harmful when coming from and entering into diseased or impaired organisms.

THE

GUTENBERG and the YELLOW JOURNALIST. HE editor of Blackwood's Magazine, in his "Musings Without Method," pays a compliment to the "yellow" journalism of the United States in his account of a supposed encounter in Hades between Johann Gutenberg, the printer whose jubilee has lately been celebrated in Germany, and the young editor of a New York newspaper of the "yellow" variety. (We are to understand that this school of journalism flourishes only in America and Shanghai. Blackwood's editor could find no instances nearer home.) The interview between these two interesting personages is supposed to be conducted as follows:

"SCENE-A meadow in Hades. Gray shadows flit in and out the distant trees. Apart from the rest sits Johann Gutenberg, bearded and austere, meditating perchance on his famous. Bible of the thirty-seven lines, or upon the infamous extortion of the cunning Fust. To him there slides up a Yellow Editor, who, leaping from his silent, intangible automobile, flourishes a phantom cigar, and thus addresses the sage : Well, Mr. Gutenberg, I'm glad to know you! You and I ought to be acquainted. Where should I have been without your movable little types? Why, nowhere at all! And though it's a sorry business to meet you here, where they print no special editions and have no limelight displays, we must do the best we can, and

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"Gutenberg (breaking in upon him). But I know not whom I have the honor to hear.

"Yellow Editor. What, don't you know me -the best-advertised man in two continents? I am or rather I was when I walked the upper air-the Boy Editor of New York. Does that say nothing to you?

"Gut. No; I am still in the dark.

"Y. E. Well, well, I guess you've no telephone hitched on to Hades, or you'd know me fast enough. I must see to that, now I've come among you. Why, I'm the first man who ever saw the real possibilities of your tip. If it hadn't been for me the printing-press would have slumbered on another five hundred years without shaking the world. You never realized what could be done with the biggest circulation. "Gut. Circulation? What is it? I don't understand the word.

You

"Y. E. (with an outburst of laughter). don't begin to know your own trade! Circulation is the soul of the printing-press. We editors don't print 'copy' to keep it in the cellar. We cover the earth with our newspapers. Why, when I was in the business, I printed more stuff in one night than you and Fust did in both your lives. Three millions of readers a day, my boy, ready to believe any lie you print-that makes a man feel big!

Gut. But when I was making my Bible, whose memory is an eternal consolation, I was proud if I printed a dozen sheets a week.

"Y. E. A dozen sheets a week of a Bible! No wonder you came near starvation. The truth is, you missed your chance. How you might have made Maintz hum if you had started a paper, and kept the secret! No competition, for you alone had the press! And if you wanted money, you should have got a syndicate to run you, and then you might have done as much as I did. Where's the use of a noble patron, I should like to know? The people's the only true patron, and-"

"Gut. You say you have accomplished much. Have you, too, left works of art behind you which rival in nobility of design and splendor of type the masterpieces which have made me glorious?

"Y. E. Splendor of type! What are you talking about? I only want a press that'll rattle me out half a million copies in a couple of hours. That's good enough for me. And the ink may be as pallid as these shades, and the paper may crinkle up like wood-chips. I guess it will last a day, and to-morrow it will be forgotten in new scandals and fresh headlines.

Gut. But surely we have not pursued the

same craft! I was only interested in the perfection of my work. When the beautiful page was finished my task was done. Who purchased my bibles I recked not; nor did I ever dream of this base artifice which you call circulation. But at least, when I died at Eltville, I had the satisfaction of an assured immortality. And you? Are you still known among your fellows of the upper earth?

"Y. E. Not I! One nail drives out another. But which is the better-fame while you live or fame after death? Give it me piping hot when I can enjoy it. The people on Broadway used to point the finger at me, and I might have governed my country if I liked. And look at the power I had! I ran the whole show as I would ; and with no other aid than the types of your invention I made war, or insisted on peace. Not only could I force men to do what I chose, I could force 'em to believe what I chose. Any fool can make the truth credible; it takes a man of genius and a big circulation to thrust falsehood down the public throat. Then, again, there was no great man I didn't call by his Christian name, and I was on easy terms with all the crowned heads. Whom did you know but a common baron? And I was ready to take on anybody's job for a sensation. The criminals feared

my reporters far more than they feared the ministers of justice. But then, you see, I was a practical man, and you-you were a dreamer. Yet how much better is the basest practice than the noblest dream!

"Gut. Indeed, if my invention be thus perverted, it were better it had never been made. The printing press in my hands was an instrument of luxury, not a means of irresponsible power. Yet even my contemporaries called it a black art. What would they say of it now, if they heard your boastful rhetoric? No: it is not for you to claim a kinship with Gutenberg. Truth and lies, beauty and squalor, do not acquire the same value because they are both printed.

Y. E. Well, well, don't get huffy about it. I don't wonder you are a bit jealous, but I'll come and tell you more about it another day. You'd like to hear how I interviewed the prizefighters, I'm sure, and perhaps I'll find you in a better temper. So long! (And the Yellow Editor is whisked out of sight by his automobile.)"

THE IRON DUKE AND THE IRATE PAINTER. N the Pleasant Pastels from Spain," which Mrs. M. L. Woods is contributing to Cornhill, she deals, in the September installment, with portraits by Goya. In them she finds, reflected with clever realism, the Spanish court life of a hundred years ago. She blames his age, not him,

for the stiff pose and affected mien of his portraits. She closes her interesting study with the following story of the passage between the painter and Wellington, who had recently entered Madrid in triumph from his victory at Salamanca :

To

"In the Quinta, then, waits the proud, irascible Spanish painter, accustomed to be treated by kings and nobles with a deference at that time not accorded to genius in England; his temper, too, hardly improved by his terrible infirmity-deafness so hopeless that he could not hear a cannon fired at four paces from him. him enters the haughty, uneducated Briton, busy, doubtless, grudging the hour which was all Goya required to sketch in a portrait, and regarding the painter-fellow as a kind of tradesman, bound to supply goods as per order. Alava, Wellington's Spanish friend, was there, and also a young man-Goya's son. When Goya had worked at the sketch awhile, he showed it to the duke. Obviously Wellington was no more competent to give an opinion on a picture than Goya was to plan a campaign; but this does not seem to have struck him. He called the thing a daub, emphasizing his uncomplimentary remarks with gestures, and desiring Goya's son to repeat them to the painter. The son declined to do so, and, together with Alava, endeavored to reason with the strange art-critic. In vain; El Lord's contempt only became more vocal. Meantime the deaf man watched, with thunder lowering on the massive brow, a stormy out-thrust of the big under-lip, the very mane of him electric with rage. Now El Lord clapped on his hat, and haughtily, without further civility, prepared to depart. Then the storm burst. A brace loaded pistols happened to be upon the table; Goya seized them and leaped toward the duke. Wellington's hand flew to his sword; Alava just succeeded in hurling himself between them, while the son struggled with his father, endeavoring to tear the pistols from his hands. So, in towering wrath, the victor of Salamanca was hustled out of the house of the yet more infuri ated painter."

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T

THE CENTURY.

HE October Century begins with an exceptionally interesting article on "China's 'Holy Land,'" by Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, being an account of an actual visit to the tomb of Confucius made by the writer. He was one of the two or three white men who have ever penetrated into this sacred ground; and it is remarkable, in the light of this summer's news from China, that he should have been permitted to take the extraordinarily valuable photographs that embellish his article. The safety of the trip was owing, of course, to the occupation of Kiaochau by the Germans; but as there were no railways, carriage-roads, hotels, or any modern comforts of traveling, the journey was not an easy one, even with the caravan and introductions which made life reasonably safe. This "Holy Land" of the Chinese is in the province of Shantung, a territory as large as Michigan, with a population twenty times as numerous. The sacred buildings are on the mountain of Tai-schau, 6,000 feet high. The last stage of the journey to the summit is made over 6,000 stone steps, equivalent to 300 stories of an ordinary house. These steps begin at a stone portal, at which, according to its inscription, the great Confucius himself halted and turned back 2,600 years ago, not having the strength to climb this marvelous staircase. The description and pictures of the tomb of Confucius at Tai-ngan-fu give a profoundly impressive hint of the ancient and mysterious civilization of the great nation which now seems doomed.

THE REVIVAL OF MINIATURE PAINTING.

Pauline King, writing on "American Miniature Painting," says that the history of contemporary work in this dainty and fascinating art began when Miss Laura C. Hills and Mr. William J. Baer turned their attention to painting on ivory. Miss King reminds us that the present vogue of miniature painting is by no means a new departure, but is a revival of the very oldest known form of the art.

THE CHINESE AS A BUSINESS MAN.

Mr. Sheridan P. Read, an ex-United States consul at Tientsin, describes "The Chinese as Business Men.' He gives the Chinaman credit for possessing, alone among all the Orientals, mercantile honor of the highest standard. He invariably delivers his goods, and of the quality that is expected. In consequence of this characteristic, our cotton goods are sold to the North China dealers almost entirely on credit, which is essential for the purchaser, as he resells to small dealers on time. Mr. Read says that a reactionary movement against the present disturbances will originate, not with the official, not with the literati, but with the common coolie and the staid, sensible, clear-eyed merchant, both of whose interests, together with those of the native producer, are everywhere suffering. He thinks that many more treaty ports should be opened, as the treaty port furnishes the ground where the Chinaman may naturally grow away from his superstitions and meet the Caucasian on safe ground.

BISHOP POTTER AGAINST CHINESE PARTITION.

Bishop Henry C. Potter, writing on "Chinese Traits and Western Blunders," ends his article with a protest against the partition of the Flowery Kingdom among the great powers. "There could not be a more stupid

or shameless policy. A nation, like a man, has a right to be until she has demonstrated unmistakably her incompetence to administer her own affairs with equal justice to all. It cannot be maintained that China has so far descended the path of national decay and disintegration."

POULTNEY BIGELOW ON THE CHINESE ARMY.

Mr. Poultney Bigelow begins the number with an account of "Wei-hai-Wei," as he saw it two years ago. In the course of his description of this strategic position which Japan was deprived of by the intervention of Germany and Russia, after her plucky victory over China, Mr. Bigelow gives some curious facts in regard to the Chinese regular army. The strategy and tactics of this army, he says, form a volume of classics compiled two thousand years ago, and this can be read only by certain scholars; and the Chinese officers are, as a rule, drawn from a social class so low that they can rarely read and write their own tongue. He says the foreigners who have been brought to China as military instructors are treated as social inferiors. Their work is looked down upon with contempt by all officials; and even when they have got their Chinese recruits into some kind of fighting shape, these are drafted off under native control, and soon drift back to the condition of the mob. China has on paper a fighting force of nearly 2,000,000 men; but the men are mostly mere coolies, and their officers scarcely better. A Chinese second-lieutenant gets $25 in gold a year, with allowances amounting to less than $100. The colonel of a regiment gets less than $300 in gold, with allowances fluctuating between $300 and $1,000.

IS ALCOHOL A GOOD FOOD?

Prof. W. O. Atwater, writing on the much-mooted question of "The Nutritive Value of Alcohol," goes into the chemistry of alcohol as a food, and proves that the alcohol usually in beverages is easily absorbed from the alimentary canal and readily oxidized in the body. He shows, further, with considerable scientific detail, that alcohol can supply the body with heat, and that it also probably yields energy for muscular work, but admits that it is difficult to prove the latter absolutely. These statements are, however, qualified by the fact that if taken in any but small quantities there is always a residuum of alcohol which is not used to advan tage by the body, and which is in its way poisonous. Professor Atwater shows, too, that alcohol may be allvaluable to the physician in treating particular ill

nesses.

In fact, he says he knows of no other material which, like alcohol, will not have to be digested, can be easily absorbed, is readily oxidized, and will supply the requisite energy. He promises, in a future article, to give the other side of the picture in the pathological effects of alcohol taken unwisely.

Mr. Chalmers Roberts gives a sketch of Mortimer Menpes, the well-known artist, who is such a social lion in London. Mr. Alexander Hume Ford gives an account of the "Waterways of America," which now include 18,566 miles of navigable rivers and canals. We still, however, have a long way to go to catch up to Russia, which has no less than 34,000 miles of interior waterways.

IN

SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE.

N the October Scribner's, Mr. Richard Harding Davis describes "The Last Days of Pretoria." Mr. Davis has seen both Boer and British camps, both Boer and British armies, and both Boer and British countries and people. His sympathies are not in doubt. Of this incident in Great Britain's onward march, he says: "As I see it, it has been a Holy War, this war of the burgher crusader, and his motives are as fine as any that ever called a minute-man' from his farm or sent a Knight of the Cross to die for it in Palestine. Still, in spite of his cause, the Boer is losing, and in time his end may come, and he may fall. But when he falls he will not fall alone; with him will end a great principle, the principle for which our forefathers fought-the right of self-government, the principle of independence."

WHY TOLSTOY IS NOT DISTURBED.

Mr. Henry Norman gives the first chapter of his serial on "Russia of To-day." He gives much space to an account of his visit to Tolstoy, whom he calls the typical Russian. Mr. Norman says that the Count is not known as a count to any one about his home. He is simply Leo, the son of Nicholas. Mr. Norman wonders that Tolstoy is left in peace by the Russian Government. Except for the suppression of some of his writings, he is not troubled; yet he said to Mr. Norman, as he willingly says to any one with whom he talks: "Three things I hate autocracy, orthodoxy, and militarism." Mr. Norman says that the general opinion among the advanced Russians is that the police are restrained in this instance by the world-wide scandal that any harsh treatment of Tolstoy would cause.

THE PROFITS OF SLAVE-TRADING.

Mr. John R. Spears, in his third paper on "The Slave Trade in America," gives some remarkable figures of the enormous profits to be made in this traffic-figures which easily explain the fascination of the business. He says, for instance, that the American ship Venus, built in Baltimore at a cost of $30,000, landed a cargo of 860 slaves on the coast of Cuba on which the profit was a trifle under $200,000 after allowing for the cost of the ship and all other expenses, although the Cuban officials received a bribe of $27.50 per head. The Baltimore schooner Napoleon, measuring but 90 tons, and not by any means worth $5,000, in those days cleared $100,000 on a single trip in 1835, when she landed a cargo of young negroes bought at $16 each and sold for $360 each. Many times the profit per slave was much greater, and negroes bought at $12 or $15 in Africa were sold within a year for $1,200 or $1,500. Mr. Spears says

the death-blow to the slave-trade was given when Capt. Nathaniel Gordon was hanged in 1862 for conveying a cargo of 890 negroes from the Congo two years before. There were slavers afloat thereafter, but when it became known that the American people would hang a slaver as a pirate, the end was at hand.

I

M'CLURE'S MAGAZINE.

N the October McClure's, Mr. Frederic A. Lucas outlines "The Ancestry of the Horse," carrying back the family record over a period of about 2,000,000 years. The animal which was the horse's forebear of 2,250,000 years ago had four toes and was about the size of a fox. McClure's shows a picture of this animal of the Eocene age, based on the form and proportions, of a skeleton which has been found in the Wyoming Mountains.

Apropos of the Presidential campaign, the opening article of the number is on "The Strategy of National Campaigns" as shown in the reminiscences of the political warfare of the last twenty-five years "by one who has been in the thick of it." The writer gives an exceedingly vivid and interesting inside history of the strategic campaigns since the dramatic episodes of 1876, when Tilden ran against Hayes. It is assumed that the pivotal points of the present campaign will be in the Middle West and in New York. He calls to mind that ever since 1864 the electoral vote of New York has swung like a pendulum between the two great political parties, and that nowhere else in the Union is there such a large army of independent voters. In summing up the claims of the party leaders he says most of the Democratic managers are united in the opinion that there is a chance to win without New York. They expect to carry Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, and Illinois, all of which went for McKinley in 1896. The Republican managers contend that McKinley cannot be defeated unless he lose New York.

CASTING A GREAT LENS.

An interesting essay in popular science is contributed by Mr. Ray Stannard Baker in his article "Casting a Great Lens." Mr. Baker tells of the work done in the glass-works of Jena, Prussia, where lenses of over four feet in diameter are cast and polished. These works were founded by the activity of Prof. Ernst Abbe, who was the first to lay down exact mathematical formulæ for making lenses. Previously they had been dependent on the experience and the experiments of highly skilled workmen. With the aid of the Prussian Government these works were established at Jena, and now over one hundred new kinds of glasses originated at Jena are manufactured there. To show the wonderful delicacy of the work, Mr. Baker says that an error or one ten thousandth of a millimeter in the curve of a lens makes it unsuitable for use in the highest grade of instruments, and that some of the smallest lenses are not larger than a pin-head, and are about as costly as a diamond of the same weight.

LESSONS OF THE SOUTH-AFRICAN WAR.

Dr. A. Conan Doyle discusses some of the lessons of the South-African War, and one of the chief of them, he says, is that the bugbear of an invasion of Great Britain is reduced to an absurdity. "With a moderate