orty
to sixty days. Soon it will beat Jules Verne or George Francis Train. So
intensely "catching" is it, that letters written by sufferers have been
known to infect the correspondents who received them in a distant town,
and become the starting-point of a local epidemic.

Of course, it may be urged that when we have proved the grip to be a
definite infection, we have taken it out of the class of "colds"
altogether, and that its bacterial origin proves nothing in regard to
the rest. But a rather interesting state of affairs developed during the
search for the true bacillus of influenza: this was that a dozen other
bacilli and cocci were discovered, each of which seemed capable of
causing all the symptoms of the _grip_, though in milder form. So that
the view of the majority of pathologists now is that these
"influenzoid," or "grip-like" attacks, under which come a majority of
all _common colds_, are probably due to a number of different milder
micro-organisms.

The next fact in favor of the infectious character of a cold is that it
begins with a chill, followed with a fever, runs a definite self-limited
course, and, barring complications, gets well of itself in a certain
time, just like the measles, scarlet fever, pneumonia, or any other
frank infection.

Colds are also followed by inflammations, or toxic attacks in other
organs of the body, lungs, stomach, bowels, heart, kidneys, nerves,
etc., just like diphtheria, scarlet fever, or typhoid, only, of course,
of milder form and less frequently.

Last, but not least practically convincing, colds may be traced from one
victim to another, may "run through" households, schools, factories, may
occur after attending church or theatre, may be checked by isolating the
sufferers; and are now most effectually treated by the inhalation of
non-poisonous germicidal or antiseptic vapors and sprays.

One of my first experiences with this last method occurred in a most
unexpected field. An old friend, a most interesting and intelligent
German, was the proprietor of a wild-animal depot, importing foreign
animals and birds and selling them to the zooelogical gardens and
circuses. I used often to drop in there to see if he had anything new,
and he would come up to see me, to tell me his troubles and keep my
dissecting-table supplied with interestingly diseased dead beasts and
birds.

One day he came up in a state of great excitement, with a very dead and
dilapidated parrot in his