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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.

The increased metabolism and fever in infection might operate as a protection in two ways the increased fever, by interfering with bacterial growth, and the increased metabolism, by breaking up the bacteria. Bacteriologists have taught us that bacteria grow best at the normal temperature of the body, hence fever must interfere with bacterial growth.

These, of course, constitute the pathogenic species, or so called "disease germs". Only such species as can overcome this first resistance can be disease germs, for they alone can retain their foothold in the body. But how do these species overcome the poisons, which kill the other harmless bacteria?

But in the decomposition that thus occurs through the agency of the putrefactive bacteria it very commonly happens that some of the food material is broken down into compounds too simple for use as plant food. These ingredients are at once in condition for plant life, as shown by the dotted lines.

"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria. But I tell him I've no quarrel with my bacteria.

You know the indols, the phenols, and the amins are produced both by putrefactive bacteria and by the process of metabolism, the burning up of the tissues in the process of utilizing the energy that means life. But under normal circumstances, the amins are not present in the blood in any such quantities as I have discovered by this new method of diffusion."

Some months ago, Professor Tyndall asked me to examine a drop of infusion of hay, placed under an excellent and powerful microscope, and to tell him what I thought some organisms visible in it were. I looked and observed, in the first place, multitudes of Bacteria moving about with their ordinary intermittent spasmodic wriggles. As to the vegetable nature of these there is now no doubt.

If this analysis is a correct one, it will vitally affect our plans for agricultural training. The student will be taught not only soil physics, but social psychology. He will learn not only the action of bacteria in milk fermentation, but the underlying causes of the social ferment among the farmers of the last thirty years.

This is an unsatisfactory basis of classification, and has produced much confusion in the attempts to classify bacteria. The problem of determining the species of bacteria is to-day a very difficult one, and with our best methods is still unsatisfactorily solved.

If one had been asked to suggest the least likely theory to explain recovery from disease, he could hardly have found one more unlikely than that the body cells developed during the disease an antidote to the poison which the disease bacteria were producing. Nevertheless, it is beyond question that such antidotes are formed during the course of the germ diseases.