Bacteriology having now emerged from noisy babyhood into promising
youth, it may not be amiss to ask how far therapeutics has been advanced
by its discoveries and what the outlook is for the future. It has been
alleged by some clinicians that the bacteriologists have been a little
dictatorial, and have carried on their propaganda somewhat after the
manner of the Salvation army. Be that as it may, the amount of
conscientious and unremunerated work which has been devoted to the
subject during the past twelve years is probably beyond the power of
conception of any one man.
In spite of numerous mistakes, exaggerations and ludicrous attempts to
re-organize therapeutics the bacteriologists have made great additions
to our knowledge. The question of bacilliary disease is, however,
enormously complex, and can not be settled by a few cultures and a few
hasty deductions. Points that were supposed to be settled a few years
ago are now under discussion again, and with regard to many of the
problems it is still impossible to say just where the truth lies. Many
thoughtful men have lately been turning their eyes from the microscope
toward the bedside, and are asking themselves whether after all the
condition of the soil is not fully as important as the germs which grow
there, and they are consequently spending less time searching after
germicides. One eminent physician predicts that the very language now
used will be unintelligible jargon to future generations of germ
seekers, and that the whole subject will have to be recast. Whether this
be too strong language or not, it is doubtless true that we are, as yet,
only on the threshold of this department of science, and that exact
truth can be established only by a closer union of clinical medicine
with bacteriological studies. The success of modern methods of
preventing disease and the comparative failure of antiseptic and
germicidal remedies in the treatment of well developed disease show that
the human body is more than a test-tube, even though numerous theories
have been tested therein to the discomfiture of the testers.