Abstract
THIS Report is part of the “Annuaire de Observatoire de Montsouris” for the year 1885, and is worthy of careful study at the present time, when bacteriology is recognised as a special and important department of science. These investigations have been carried on at Montsouris since the year 1875, and through them Dr. Miquel has been enabled to throw much light on the meteorological aspect of the subject—an aspect that has received but little attention from investigators, as compared with the pathological. Every one will acknowledge that in entering upon a new field in scientific investigation it is extremely important that the line of research should proceed upon as broad a basis as possible, and that the work of experimentation and observation should not be confined to one aspect of the new study, however important it may be. Fallacies are sure to arise when any department of science is too narrowly specialised, from want of that more general knowledge which would prevent the adoption of erroneous views. This is especially liable to be the case in bacteriology, in which the objects of study are so minute and yet so widely distributed in nature. Dr. Miquel's researches—important as they are in themselves—are doubly welcome at the present time, as tending to popularise a field in which workers are urgently needed, as well as contributing largely to our knowledge. The example of Paris—the only city in which systematic investigations of the sort are now undertaken—should stimulate other towns which possess properly equipped meteorological laboratories, to conduct observations on the bacterial organisms contained in air, rain, and soil. The results obtained at Montsouris could then be confirmed or confuted by the results obtained at other laboratories under widely different climatic and meteorological conditions, and the enunciation of general laws and principles would in time become possible. We shall endeavour to place before our readers in this article some of the more important results and deductions made from them by Dr. Miquel, from the observations at Montsouris; but it should be distinctly recognised that any conclusions arrived at by Dr. Miquel are applicable only to Paris and its neighbourhood, and cannot at present be accepted as true for other places where the climatic conditions are different.
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Microscopic Organisms in Air and Water 1 . Nature 34, 318–320 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034318a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034318a0