a cause. An unpunctual man is always in a hurry; but it does not
follow that hurry is the cause of unpunctuality: on the contrary,
what is the matter with the patient is sloth. When Florence
Nightingale said bluntly that if you overcrowded your soldiers in
dirty quarters there would be an outbreak of smallpox among them,
she was snubbed as an ignorant female who did not know that
smallpox can be produced only by the importation of its specific
microbe.

If this was the line taken about smallpox, the microbe of which
has never yet been run down and exposed under the microscope by
the bacteriologist, what must have been the ardor of conviction
as to tuberculosis, tetanus, enteric fever, Maltese fever,
diphtheria, and the rest of the diseases in which the
characteristic bacillus had been identified! When there was no
bacillus it was assumed that, since no disease could exist
without a bacillus, it was simply eluding observation. When the
bacillus was found, as it frequently was, in persons who were not
suffering from the disease, the theory was saved by simply
calling the bacillus an impostor, or pseudobacillus. The same
boundless credulity which the public exhibit as to a doctor's
power of diagnosis was shown by the doctors themselves as to the
analytic microbe hunters. These witch finders would give you a
certificate of the ultimate constitution of anything from a
sample of the water from your well to a scrap of your lungs, for
seven-and-sixpense. I do not suggest that the analysts were
dishonest. No doubt they carried the analysis as far as they
could afford to carry it for the money. No doubt also they could
afford to carry it far enough to be of some use. But the fact
remains that just as doctors perform for half-a-crown, without