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I was with the Philadelphia Institute expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope, hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say, his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that hadn't wings and was uncertain was a reptile. Well, then, has this dog any wings? No. Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium?
Still, the studies of the last twenty years or more have disclosed some definite relations of bacteria and disease, and a list of the diseases more or less definitely associated with distinct species of bacteria is of interest. Such a list, including only well-known diseases, is as follows: Name of disease. Name of bacterium producing the disease. Bacillus anthracis. Cholera.
It is the microscopic yeast-plant which, by seizing on certain atoms of the molecule, liberates the remaining atoms in the form of carbonic-acid and alcohol, thus effecting fermentation; it is another microscopic plant a bacterium, as Devaine had christened it which in a similar way effects the destruction of organic molecules, producing the condition which we call putrefaction.
The bacterium is generally a jointed rod-like filament of living matter, and its native world seems to be any putrefying organic substance. Bacteria are the smallest of microscopic organisms. They are widely diffused in the natural world, existing independently and also in a parasitical way, in connection with larger forms of organic life. They multiply with the greatest rapidity.
There is a special instrument for centering and illuminating. On the stage of the instrument, the Bacterium with its flagellum in distinct focus is placed. Instead of the simple eyepiece, camera lucida is placed upon it.
It is true that we cannot say of mere points of dust examined under the microscope, that one particular germ belongs to vibrio, another to bacterium; but how is it possible to doubt that the vibrios issue, as we see them, from an ovum of some kind, a cyst, or germ, of determinate character, when, after having placed some of those indeterminate motes of dust into clean water, we suddenly see, after an interval of not more than one or two hours, an adult vibrio crossing the field of the microscope, without our having been able to detect any intermediate state between its birth and adolescence?
Van Tieghem has shown, subsists upon the hydrocarbons contained in plants, and disorganizes vegetable tissues in disengaging hydrogen, carbonic acid, and vegetable acids. Bacterium roseopersicina forms, in pools, rosy or red pellicles that cover vegetable debris and disengage gases of an offensive odor.
On the whole, the bacterium fulfills its vital offices in two ways, or with two results; first, fermentation, and secondly, disease. To this field of inquiry Pasteur devoted himself with the greatest assiduity. He began to investigate the diseased tissue of animals, and was rewarded with the discovery of the germs from which the disease had come.
There was the bacillus anthracis; there was the micrococcus; there was the Bacterium termo, and the Bacterium lactis that's what turns the goat milk sour even to this day, Hare-Lip; and there were Schizomycetes without end. And there were many others...."
These may contribute, perhaps, to the troubles arising from poisonous foods, but can not be regarded as disease germs proper. As has already been stated, our ideas of the relation of bacteria to disease have undergone quite a change since they were first formulated, and we recognise other factors influencing disease besides the actual presence of the bacterium.
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