The wound, when uncovered, was found perfectly clean, uninflamed, and entirely free from pus. Placing over it a bit of gold beater's skin, I walked about all day. Toward evening, itching and heat were felt; a large accumulation of pus followed, and I was forced to go to bed again. The water bandage was restored, but it was powerless to check the action now set up; arnica was applied, but it made matters worse. The inflammation increased alarmingly, until finally I was ignobly carried on men's shoulders down the mountain, and transported to Geneva, where, thanks to the kindness of friends, I was immediately placed in the best medical hands. On the morning after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Gautier discovered an abscess in my instep, at a distance of five inches from the wound. The two were connected by a channel, or _sinus_, as it is technically called, through which he was able to empty the abscess without the application of the lance. By what agency was that channel formed--what was it that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my instep, and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed? In the very room where the water dressing had been removed from my wound and the gold beater's skin applied to it, I opened this year a number of tubes, containing perfectly clear and sweet infusions of fish, flesh, and vegetable. These hermetically sealed infusions had been exposed for weeks, both to the sun of the Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen, without showing the slightest turbidity or signs of life. But two days after they were opened, the greater number of them swarmed with the bacteria of putrefaction, the germs of which had been contracted from the dust-laden air of the room. And, had the pus from my abscess been examined, my memory of its appearance leads me to infer that it would have been found equally swarming with these bacteria--that it was their germs which got into my incautiously opened wound. They were the subtile workers that burrowed down my shin, dug the abscess in my instep, and produced effects which might well have proved fatal to me.--TYNDALL.