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It was largely through flies that the disgraceful epidemic of typhoid, which ravaged our camps on our own soil during the Spanish-American War and killed many times more than fell by Spanish bullets, was spread. It is also believed that typhoid bacilli may be carried in the infected dust of streets and camps.
Osler, one of the greatest living medical authorities, mentions repeatedly in his works that the bacilli of diphtheria, pneumonia and of many other virulent diseases are found in the bodies of healthy persons. The inability of bacteria, by themselves, to create diseases is further confirmed by the well-known facts of natural immunity to specific infection or contagion.
Indeed, Koch thinks that the admixture of sulphate of iron with fæcal matter may arrest putrefaction, and really remove what may be the most destructive process to the comma bacilli. Hence he would distinguish between substances which merely arrest putrefaction and those which are bactericidal; for the former may simply serve the purpose of preserving the infective virus.
I stared as the tubes vanished from sight, feeling that it was too late to regret what had now been done, for nothing could collect those millions of bacilli, that had been set free in the water. Already some of them had perhaps entered the dark cavernous mouth of the first culvert to start on their slow journey to Birmingham. The light faded from the sky and darkness spread swiftly over the lake.
The man who was immune to yellow fever was carried away by cholera; and if he were immune to that, too, the Black Death, which was the bubonic plague, swept him away. For it was these bacteria, and germs, and microbes, and bacilli, cultured in the laboratories of the West, that had come down upon China in the rain of glass. All organization vanished. The government crumbled away.
Lethbury in an improved way of making beef stock, and called her attention to the unhygienic qualities of carpets. She poured out distracting facts about bacilli and vegetable mould, and demonstrated that curtains and picture-frames are a hot-bed of animal organisms.
Only a very small per cent of the bacilli of any sort in the world are harmful; the vast majority are exceedingly helpful. There is evidently some truth in this view of children's diseases, especially so far as the reason for their steady persistence and undiminished spread is concerned, namely, the comparative carelessness and indifference with which they are regarded and treated.
In any event, Pasteur began to investigate hydrophobia, and at length discovered the bacilli which produce it. At least he found in animals affected with rabies, notably in the spinal marrow of such animals, minute living organisms, having the form of thread-like animalculæ, with heads at one end.
The original theory was interesting and was, in part, that the bacteria derived from soured milk would drive out of the intestinal canal all the harmful germs. Quite possibly there may be something in the theory, especially if large quantities of milk are taken with the lactic acid bacilli, but the beneficial effect of this change of bacteria is not convincingly of great consequence.
Indeed, despite his Eastern blood, he might have posed for a Sadler picture, his small and refined features seeming out of place above the bulky body. "Can you forgive my clumsiness?" I began. But the bishop raised his small, slim-fingered hand of old-ivory hue deprecatingly. His system was supercharged with typhoid bacilli, and, as sometimes occurs, the superfluous "bugs" had sought exit.
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