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I believe therefore that it would be extremely instructive in furunculosis, to find a patient willing to submit to a number of punctures in different parts of the body away from formed or forming furuncles, and thus secure many cultures, simultaneous of otherwise, of the blood of the general circulation. I am convinced that among them would be found growths of the micro-organism of furuncles.
Every infectious disease is now held to be due to its own particular micro-organism, and many diseases that were not until recently thought to be infectious are now classed as such because they have been proved to be caused by living germs. Conspicuous among these diseases is pulmonary consumption.
To see the micro-organism move, evolve and revolve in the midst of normal cells, uncoil and undulate in the fluids which they inhabit, to see them play hide and seek with the blood corpuscles and clumps of fibrin, turn, twist, and rotate as if in a cage, to see these deadly little trypanosomes moving back and forth in every direction displaying their delicate undulating membranes and shoving aside the blood cells that are in their way while by their side the leucocytes, or white corpuscles, lazily extend or retract their pseudopods of protoplasm.
Once after I was a protoplasm and a micro-organism, and a mollusc, and other things, I probably was a predatory animal nice and sleek with velvet feet and shining incandescent eyes and very, very predatory.... That's doubtless why I often feel so deliciously awake at night with a tameless longing to prowl under the moon.... And I think I'd better go in, now."
If I can keep the specific micro-organism that causes hog-cholera off my place, I need not fear the disease. The same is true of swine plague. These diseases are of bacterial origin, and are communicated by the transference of bacteria from the infected to the non-infected. I propose to keep my healthy herd as far removed as possible from all sources of infection.
Examples of Pathogenic Bacteria. Diseased hides carry this micro-organism, and thus may occasion disease among those who handle hides and wool. Now, while most species of bacteria are harmless, some are the cause of sickness and death when they gain admittance to the body under certain conditions. The production of certain diseases by the agency of bacteria has now been proved beyond all doubt.
All such work of vegetable organisms, whether going on in the moulding cheese, in the souring of milk, in putrefying meat, in rotting fruit, or in decomposing fruit juice, is essentially one of fermentation, caused by these minute forms of plant life. There are many kinds of fermentation, each with its own special form of minute plant life or micro-organism.
It is practically admitted that every ailment, with the exception of mechanical injuries, is the direct result of a specific germ; and even in accidents and simple fractures, no matter what may be the nature of the bruise, a micro-organism soon announces its presence, so that if not the parent, it is the inseparable companion, in fact the shadow, of disease.
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