Germs, dust, and disease : two chapters in our life history / by Andrew Smart.

  • Smart, Andrew.
Date:
[1883]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Germs, dust, and disease : two chapters in our life history / by Andrew Smart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    G DIFFERENT KINDS OF GERMS. from the vegetable kingdom (Bacillus anthracis), namely, the rod- like fungus of anthrax, a fatal disease, chiefly attacking animals such as the horse and ox, and sometimes man. These infecting particles resemble, as you see, minute rods. They grow into fibres, then fructify, each one producing a number of spores, which are the oval bodies seen in the diagram. In this disease, these germs infest the tissues and blood of the infected animal or per- son, and live, grow, and multiply at the expense of the tissues and blood. If now the blood containing these rods and spores be filtered, it becomes harmless, that is, it will not infect another animal. But, on the contrary, these bodies will cause the disease in its most virulent form. This diagram shows a drawing of a section of skin in erysipelas, an infectious disease of a rapidly spreading nature, characterised by great inflammatory swelling and redness (hence named St Anthony’s fire). The dotted portions indicate the lymph vessels and spaces, the dots representing minute vegetable spores (micrococci) crowding the spaces. There is no longer any doubt that diphtheria is a disease essentially due to the presence of similar parasitic organisms. This other diagram furnishes an example of another kind It exhibits the spirilla of relapsing fever,* sometimes called famine fever, from its occurrence during periods of scarcity. You readily distinguish the organism existing among the blood-corpuscles by its spiral or corkscrew appearance. This fever relapses for a week, then suddenly re-appears for a week, and so on, hence its name. The spirilla is found in the blood when the fever comes on, and disappears when it goes off, and finally disappears, when the sufferer recovers—thus proving its connection with the disease. Another discovery has lately been made by Professor Klebs throwing much interesting light on the causation of marsh or malarial fever. He found a species of vegetable organism exist- ing in the air of the Pontine marshes, which, when injected under the skin, produced that fever. Further proof of the connection * Obermeyer.
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