On slight ailments, and on treating disease / by Lionel S. Beale.

  • Beale, Lionel S. (Lionel Smith), 1828-1906.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On slight ailments, and on treating disease / by Lionel S. Beale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    90/410 (page 78)
    organism and result, in fact, from abnormal growth and multiplication of certain forms of living matter of the tissues or fluids of the body. In this process of descent from the bioplasm of a high to that of a low degraded form, the living particles lose some of the most striking of their original powers and acquire new ones, different from any possessed by the higher bioplasm from which they came. The most important of the living disease germs which are instru- mental in spreading contagious diseases are the following :—i. Bacteria, micrococci, and the still more minute buds and germs of these and allied organisms. 2. The germs of microscopic and other fungi. 3. Minute particles of living matter originating in the living matter of the organism itself. Of Bacteria, Bacilli, Microbes, Micrococci, and Allied Organisms.— Although there is much yet to be learned before we shall be able to give a full and accurate account of the exact way in which these, perhaps the lowest of the low forms of life in the world, are connected with disease and death in man, and in all animals and plants, so much has been demonstrated of late years towards proving that, at least, in many instances, there is a true causal connection, and it is therefore necessary that our attention should be directed to the consideration of a question of such great interest and consequence. While actual proof that the bacteria really cause the disease is in some cases wanting, the evidence in many is so strong that it is im- possible to avoid the conclusion that the connection is direct and intimate. On the one hand many, perhaps hundreds of species of bacteria are as harmless as their presence is universal, and, on the other, the entrance of certain forms into the organism is so soon followed by characteristic symptoms exactly repeated in case after case, that we cannot doubt for a moment that the minute living particle by its growth and multiplication in the blood and fluids of the organism, and by the changes it causes during its growth, is the direct cause of disease and death. Of examples of harmless bacteria you may find millions in and amongst the epithelial particles of the mouth and tongue of every one. Of the death-causing bacterium I cannot give a better instance than that of anthrax. So certain is its influence that if but a living particle less than the one hundred thousandth of an inch in diameter be introduced into the blood of certain animals, they will almost certainly have the characteristic symptoms in a short time, and will almost as certainly die. Wherever organic matter is undergoing change and disintegration in an organism, or outside it, at the temperature of man's body, or some degrees lower or higher than this, and in some cases at a much lower temperature, such organisms will be found in countless multitudes. They grow and multiply at the expense of the disintegrating organic