nd was met, and in 1917 there were
fifteen new plants turning out 64,146,499 pounds of phenol valued at
$23,719,805.

Some of the coal-tar products, as we see, serve many purposes. For
instance, picric acid appears in three places in this book. It is a high
explosive. It is a powerful and permanent yellow dye as any one who has
touched it knows. Thirdly it is used as an antiseptic to cover burned
skin. Other coal-tar dyes are used for the same purpose, "malachite
green," "brilliant green," "crystal violet," "ethyl violet" and
"Victoria blue," so a patient in a military hospital is decorated like
an Easter egg. During the last five years surgeons have unfortunately
had unprecedented opportunities for the study of wounds and fortunately
they have been unprecedentedly successful in finding improved methods of
treating them. In former wars a serious wound meant usually death or
amputation. Now nearly ninety per cent. of the wounded are able to
continue in the service. The reason for this improvement is that
medicines are now being made to order instead of being gathered "from
China to Peru." The old herb doctor picked up any strange plant that he
could find and tried it on any sick man that would let him. This
empirical method, though hard on the patients, resulted in the course of
five thousand years in the discovery of a number of useful remedies. But
the modern medicine man when he knows the cause of the disease is
usually able to devise ways of counteracting it directly. For instance,
he knows, thanks to Pasteur and Metchnikoff, that the cause of wound
infection is the bacterial enemies of man which swarm by the million
into any breach in his protective armor, the skin. Now when a breach is
made in a line of intrenchments the defenders rush troops to the
threatened spot for two purposes, constructive and destructive,
engineers and warriors, the former to build up the rampart with
sandbags, the latter to kill the enemy. So when the human body is
invaded the blood brings to the breach two kinds of defenders. One is
the serum which neutralizes the bacterial poison and by coagulating
forms a new skin or scab over the exposed flesh. The other is the
phagocytes or white corpuscles, the free lances of our corporeal
militia, which attack and kill the invading bacteria. The aim of the
physician then is to aid these defenders as much as possible without
interfering with them. Therefore the antiseptic he is seeking is one
that wi