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The lymph contains, as it were, the poisonous matter resulting from the life and activity of the tubercle bacterium. The fluid is used by hypodermic injection, and when so administered produces both a general and local reaction. The system is powerfully affected. A sense of weariness comes on. The breathing is labored. Nausea ensues; and a fever supervenes which lasts for twelve or fifteen hours.
The bacteria multiply by the simple process of growing longer and splitting into two, fission, as it is called, and the process is so rapid that within an hour or two after being formed a bacterium may be raising a family of its own. Some of the milk brought to the cities contains as many as 15,000,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter, that is, about 600,000 per drop.
The same process may be repeated over and over again, until the same species of bacterium will come to be known by several different names, as it has been studied by different observers. This matter is made even more confusing by the fact that any species of bacterium may show more or less variation.
The bacterium which at the beginning had been for its savagery a wolf, became in the second body a cur; then a hound; then a spaniel; and then a diminutive lapdog! The bacteria were thus said to be "domesticated;" for the process was similar to the domestication of wild animals into tame.
The bacterium, the simplest animal, the lowest plant, the higher plants and animals, all of these have a biological problem to solve which comprises eight terms or parts, no more and no less. This is surely an astonishing agreement when we consider the varied forms of living creatures.
It therefore makes its appearance as a blue mass separated from the water, and is then removed as indigo. Of the nature of the process we as yet know very little. That it is a fermentation is certain, and it has been proved that it is produced by a definite species of bacterium which occurs on the indigo leaves.
All this shows that there are other factors in determining the course of a disease, or even the existence of a disease, than the simple presence of a peculiar species of pathogenic bacterium. From the facts just stated it will be evident that any list of germ diseases will be rather uncertain.
The parent cell divides into two; these two into two others, and so on. The rapidity with which these organisms multiply under favorable conditions, makes them, in some cases, most dangerous enemies. It has been calculated that if all of the organisms survived, one bacterium would lead to the production of several billions of others in twenty-four hours. The Struggle of Bacteria for Existence.
The number of offspring that would result in the course of twenty-four hours at this rate is of course easily computed. In one day each bacterium would produce over 16,500,000 descendants, and in two days about 281,500,000,000. It has been further calculated that these 281,500,000,000 would form about a solid pint of bacteria and weigh about a pound.
The controversy over spontaneous generation, which, thanks to Pasteur and Tyndall, had just been brought to a termination, made it clear that no bacterium need be feared where an antecedent bacterium had not found lodgment; Listerism in surgery had now shown how much might be accomplished towards preventing the access of germs to abraded surfaces of the body and destroying those that already had found lodgment there.
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