# The Stolen Bacillus explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by H. G. Wells.

## What happens

A bacteriologist shows a visitor a deadly cholera culture, which the visitor—an anarchist—steals with the intent to poison London's water supply. After swallowing the culture during a chase, the anarchist believes he has unleashed a plague, but the bacteriologist reveals it was actually a harmless blue dye meant for monkeys.

## Themes in this chapter

### Technology and Dehumanization

The bacteriologist's detached, rhetorical description of cholera's potential devastation contrasts with the anarchist's fanatical embrace of mass death, highlighting how scientific knowledge can be weaponized.

### Ambition and Failure

The anarchist's grandiose plan to become a famous martyr collapses when he learns the stolen bacillus was harmless, underscoring the futility of his destructive ambition.

## Character check-ins

### Minnie

The bacteriologist's wife, who retrieves his belongings and drives the cab home, convinced he is mad.

## Key lines

> Only break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste—say to them, 'Go forth, increase and multiply, and replenish the cisterns,' and death—mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity—would be released upon this city

If you broke this tube into the water supply, the invisible bacteria would spread through the city, causing a horrific and untraceable epidemic.

_The bacteriologist dramatically explains the potential of the cholera culture to the anarchist._

> He would teach them yet what it is to isolate a man.

He would finally make society pay for ostracizing him.

_The anarchist's motivation is rooted in personal resentment and a desire for revenge._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_25_se/chapters/the-stolen-bacillus
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_25_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_25_se/chapters