ed the subject are convinced
that much of this apparent increase is due to more accurate and careful
diagnosis. Up to ten years or so ago it was generally believed that
pneumonia was rare in young children. Now, however, that we make the
diagnosis with a microscope, we discover that a large percentage of the
cases of capillary bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, and acute congestion
of the lung in children are due to the presence of the pneumococcus.
Similarly, at the other end of the line, deaths that were put down to
bronchitis, asthma, heart failure, yes, even to old age, have now been
shown on bacteriological examination to be due to this ubiquitous imp of
malevolence; so that, on the whole, all that we are probably justified
in saying is that pneumonia is not decreasing under civilization. This
is not to be wondered at, inasmuch as the inevitable crowding and
congestion which accompanies civilization, especially in its derivative
sense of "citification," tends to foster it in every way, both by
multiplying the opportunities for infection and lowering the resisting
power of the crowded masses.

Moreover, it was only in the last ten years, yes, within the last five
years, that we fairly grasped the real method and nature of the spread
of the disease, and recognized the means that must be adopted against
it. And as all of these factors are matters which are not only
absolutely within our own control, but are included in that programme of
general betterment of human comfort and vigor to which the truest
intelligence and philanthropy of the nation are now being directed, the
outlook for the future, instead of being gloomy, is distinctly
encouraging.

Our chief difficulty in discovering the cause of pneumonia lay in the
swarm of applicants for the honor. Almost every self-respecting
bacteriologist seemed to think it his duty to discover at least one, and
the abundance and variety of germs constantly or accidentally present in
the human saliva made it so difficult positively to isolate the real
criminal that, although it was identified and described as long ago as
1884 by Fraenkel, the validity of its claim was not generally recognized
and established until nearly ten years later.

It is a tiny, inoffensive-looking little organism, of an oval or
lance-head shape, which, after masquerading under as many aliases as a
confidence man, has finally come to be called the pneumococcus, for
short, or "lung germ." Though by those who