Round the fountain.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Round the fountain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    valve, to which he clung with the agony of despair. To his surprise he found the situation not so bad as he had thought ; he made good his foothold, and managed to multiply a bit, and soon he found that he had set up a malignant endocarditis. Now the news of all this, carried back to the alimentary canal, created great excitement in the streptococcal world. The long-chained sorts got to hear about it, and were rather annoyed that the common short-chained ones should have got the start of them in this new school of adventure. They had a lot of quiet talk amongst them- selves, and at last decided to have a symposium at the Junior Athenaeum, where there was a streptococcus who was said to have some very original views. He was an active young fellow, with a moderately long chain, and he had thought very deeply on the emigration problem. The short-chained proletariat, he said, had evidently achieved a temporary success of sorts by luck rather than judgment. But if any lasting success were to be obtained they must go to work in quite a different way. It was no good trusting to luck ; what they needed were weapons of active offence, and he had got a plan for brewing toxins which should so weaken the enemy that the victory of the streptococci would be assured. He said he had already made a number of experiments, though he had not as yet published anything. He had not hitherto succeeded with extra cellular toxins, but he showed them some intra-cellular ones of which he had great hopes. He spoke too of haemolysins, pointing out how important oxygen was to the tissues of the enemy, whereas we, he justly added, in virtue of our long residence in the alimentary canal, have adapted ourselves very fairly
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