The story of the bacteria and their relations to health and disease / by T. Mitchell Prudden.

  • Theophil Mitchell Prudden
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The story of the bacteria and their relations to health and disease / by T. Mitchell Prudden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    their bodies for only a comparatively short time, the supply would run short and new beings could not continue to appear. When that mysterious group of activities which we call life ceases to be manifested, in animals and plants alike, if moisture and oxy- gen and sufficient warmth are present, that process known as putrefaction or decay begins, by which the old combinations of matter are broken up and the material set free for the use of other beings. Now just here enter the bacteria. It is they who tear these old organic compounds asunder, using a little of them as may suit their own needs, and turning over the rest to their earth neighbors, who have got higher up the scale of being, but not yet so far as not to need absolutely and hourly oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, to keep their life’s furnaces a-going. It is a very motley group of chemical substances which these bacteria set free in feeding themselves on nature’s waste organic materials. Sometimes these are very bad- smelling gases, sometimes aromatic substances, sometimes they are sweet, sometimes they are
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