File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17973197870).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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A Garden of Germs MUSEUM OF LIVING BACTERIA A UNIQUE PUBLIC SERVICE By C.-E. A. WINSLOW Curator of Public Healll. in th.- .\n.or.cau Museum of Natural History and Professor of I'uWi.- Healtl. in tl.o Yale Metjical School IX line of the towiT rooms of the American Museum of Natural His- tory is a strange sort of miniature botanical garden. All that the casual visitor would notice in the large concrete closet which forms the inner sanctum of this unique lalioratory would he rows upon rows of test tubes in neatly ar- ranged and classified wocden racks. A somewhat closer inspection would show in each tube a sort of jelly. On the slanting surface of the jelly is what looks like a smear of whitish paste in some tubes, while in others the paste is more abundant and yellowish and in still others it looks like a wrinkled mass of moist brown paper. The smear, or the wrinkled mass, in each case is a growth of mi- crobes, millions of them; and the collection is a museinn of liv- ing bacteria. It is a far cry from the whale and the dino- saur, repre- sented by their mighty skele- tons in the ex- hibition halls of the Museum, to the typhoid ba- cillus, so tiny
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that 400,000,000 could be ))acked into a grain of gramilated sugar. \et the l)acteria fall within the field of natural history as truly as whale or dinosaur, redwood tree or elephant. Indeed the inter-relationships between microbes and the higher plants and animals are so many that this group is of peculiar interest. Their activity in changing de- composing organic matter into forms suitable for the food of green plants and in fixing the nitrogen of the air and rendering it available for utilization, lies at the very foundation of all agriculture. Bacteria not only cause manifold dis- eases of plants and animals, Init are also the active agents in the decay of foods and other or- ganic com- pounds; while on the other hand they ripen our butter and cheese, make vinegar and lac- tic acid, and aid us in a score of other arts and industries. These small- est and most abundant of liv- ing things have heretofore never been honored with the recog- 295

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