The Martialists consider that to
this careful purification of their water they owe in great measure
their exemption from the epidemic diseases which were formerly not
infrequent. They maintain that all such diseases are caused by organic
self-multiplying germs, and laugh to scorn the doctrine of spontaneous
generation, either of disease, or of even such low organic life as can
propagate it. I suggested that the atmosphere itself must, if their
theory were true, convey the microscopic seeds of disease even more
freely and universally than the water.
"Doubtless," replied our guide, "it would scatter them more widely;
but it does not enable them to penetrate and germinate in the body
half so easily as when conveyed by water. You must be aware that the
lining of the upper air-passages arrests most of the impurities
contained in the inhaled air before it comes into contact with the
blood in the lungs themselves. Moreover, the extirpation of one
disease after another, the careful isolation of all infectious cases,
and the destruction of every article that could preserve or convey the
poisonous germs, has in the course of ages enabled us utterly to
destroy them.
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