Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1891-07-23
eLlMPsEs OF BACTERIA
Germs Which Produce 281, 800, 0OO, 900
Living Beings In Two Days.

Far down in the scale Of plant life is
certain great group whose individuals
are spoken of in a general way as mi
cro-organisms, or microbes or germs.
One great family of the group of micro
organisms is called 'yeasts." The
commercial value of the single yeast
plant may be estimated from the fact
that the cake of yeast costing the con-
sumner one cent contains many million
plants.
When these yeast plants, well dis
tributed through the dough, are set in
warm place, they begin to grow, and
in order to grow they must consume
food. Now the flour and salt and water
in the dough are very choice viands for
these little plants; they assimilate
some elements, and set free, among
other things, carbonic acid gas This
occupies much more space than the car
bon and oxygen occupied in the flour,
and the gas as it expands rises the
dough, rendering it light and porous.
At the right moment off goes the whole
mass to the oven, where the lives of
the myriad budding plants are soon ex-
tinguished; and when we eat the bread,
we eat the yeast cells along with the
fragments of the cells of the wheat or
rye of the -four.
Another familiar group of micro
organisms are the molds; and still an
other group of lowliest, finest plants,
closely allied to the fungi, are the bac-
teria-elemental organisms so simple
in structure as to be almost completely
represented by lines and dots, but en-
dowed with such limitless powers of re-
production as almost to shame the null
tiplication table Under the most pow
erful lenses they are seen to consist of
minute mass of granular protoplasm
surrounded by thin structureless
membrane.
When we put them under favorable
conditions of growth and give them
food enough, they may be seen to di-
vide across the middle, each portion
soon becoming larger, and again divid-
ing, so that it has been calculated that
single germ, under favorable condi-
tions, might, at the end of two days,
have added to the worlds living beings
PSI, 800, 900, 600 new individual bacteria.
Indeed, if this sort of thing were to go
on for few weeks unhindered, pretty
much all the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen
and nitrogen available for life purposes
would be used up, there would be a
corner in life stuff, and even the mas
ter, man, would be forced to the wall.
But numerous causes arrest their
spread, and the bacteria, in the long
rum are held closely within bounds the
world over
Indeed, life goes hard with many
forms, and but for curious provision
for their preservation under adverse
circumstances it is likely that many
species would soon die out
1t is found that, when the conditions
become too unfavorable for the contin-
uance of life in some bacteria, a portion
of the protoplasm sequesters itself in
one end of the germ and surrounds it
self with a dense resistant envelope
This is called a spore The old shell
falls away, and this spore is now capa
BILE of resisting vicissitudes of tempera-
ture such as would have Destroyed it in
its other form. Restore the spore, how
ever, to favorable surroundings and il
bursts its protecting she'll, and emerge:
thin-skinned and vulnerable, but an
active and perhaps a triumphant germ
All of the bacteria, so far as we
hn in, icli r,s
themselves, of tearing asunder othel
forms of matter, assimilating part o
it in new combinations in their owl
bodies and setting free the rest Thes,
chemical substances which are set FIRE,
by living, growing bacteria, are of tn,
most diverse characters. They may b,
acid or alkaline, aromatic or bad-smell
ing, harmless or very injurious to man
The soil forms the great living an
lurking place of the more common
forms, and from this they are sprea
far and wide, into the air as part of tn
dust, or are washed off into the surfac
and other waters.
The life history of many of thes
species of bacteria is well known to us
while whole groups are almost who'll
unstudied. This much has been we
established, that there are some specie
which are quite indispensable to tn
higher forms of life in this world, b,
cause it is they which tear dead organi
matter to pieces, and fit it to be take
mp by plants and worked over into foo
for men and animals. A piece of mes
or any other organic matter would n
main unchanged indefinitely if shut Il
so that no living bacteria could come j
contact with it. Under ordinary col
ditions, however, the bacteria do gal
access to all dead organic matter, an
then ensue putrefaction, and finally
total destruction-that is, a tot;
The bacteria are thus the great scavel
gers of the earth.
Others are injurious to man. 1t h;
been learned within the past few year
that several of the most serious di
eases known are caused by particult
species of bacteria. Among the form
which thus originate are tuberculosis
Asiatlc cholera, erysipelas and SON
forms of blood poisoning, tetanus {
lockiaw, some forms of pneumoni
typhoid fever and diphtheria. "
know the germs which are concerne
in the causation of these diseases, ar
can grow them in tubes in the labor
tory and work out their life history.
Vast numbers of bacteria are take
into our system with great variety
uncooked foods, and with water al
milk and of those which multiply
our bodies the great majority are i
nocuous, but small proportion
them produce substances which act lii
poisons These substances are Gale
ptomaines.
1t is difficult to conceive that all the
curious doing S, all these far-reaching a
complishments, should be carried on
I