The germs are also guilty of other eccentricities, of which perhaps the most remarkable is inducing an attack one day in a pregnant woman and the next in her unborn child. It is therefore impossible to overrate the importance of the discovery of specific germs, for it must lead to a more rational treatment of many diseases, a mode by which they can be acted on direct, instead of through that long-suffering organ, the stomach. In one disease of Asiatic origin we know that the functions of that organ are so completely in abeyance that any medicine administered through it is either unabsorbed or rejected. Altogether, it will be a happy period for suffering humanity when some process is brought to light by which hypodermic injection of a germicide produces immediate contact. Such a discovery will doubtless take time; but then Rome was not built in a day, and the marvellous contributions of Jenner, Harvey, Simpson, and Lister were the result of years of patient study and untiring research. And what a result! Think of the millions that have been saved by vaccination from a loathsome disease, of the floods of pain that have been averted by the use of anæsthetics; of the manner in which atmospheric germs have been kept at bay, while the surgeon searches for a deep-seated aneurism or performs an amputation! Pasteur’s inoculation for that harrowing disease, rabies, is progressing slowly but surely; and the discovery of Koch—based on the presence of “bacilli” as the _fons et origo malorum_—will probably lead to results of which we can at present scarcely form an idea. In India cholera is endemic and devastating; in this country we have scrofula, struma or tubercle. Neither respects persons, attacking rich and poor alike, the latter being particularly subject to tubercle for reasons which need no explanation in these days, when education stalks through the length and breadth of the land, dragging pianos, science, and art in its train. We may therefore hope that the cure of “intermittents” will be performed on the same model; then will the alkaloid of cinchona descend from the position of anti-periodic and febrifuge to the level of a valuable tonic. Just as the gardener must thoroughly fumigate his greenhouses with tobacco in order to rid his plants of aphides, so must these “bacilli” be attacked early and thoroughly, and then I feel sure that sea voyages would be attended with better results. I am aware that one swallow does not make a summer; but, taking into consideration the palpable improvement mentioned above, only one deduction could fairly be made as to the beneficial effects of sea air. The average time spent by me in any one place during the two years I had been in Burmah was about four months; the next three years this increased to seven; and the year afterwards it fell to a week.