FOOD AND BACTERIA—THE NEW BROMATHERAPY

Alimentary bacteriology is in that interesting evolutionary stage when the light of investigation discloses a new picture of possibilities almost as often as it is turned on the subject. One of the newly discovered situations has been presented in an address to the Philadelphia Pathological Society by Professor Kendall¹ of the Northwestern University Medical School:

The belief that the intestinal flora is fundamentally a physiologic unit rather than a heterogeneous collection of adventitious microbes has afforded opportunity for a new avenue of approach to this complex subject. Viewed from this angle, the kaleidoscopic aggregation of micro-organisms which comprise the normal intestinal flora stands in a rather definite relation to the diet of the host. That is to say, as the diet is changed along definite lines a dual bacterial response may be elicited. The types of bacteria may and frequently do shift. Those organisms which cannot accommodate themselves to