The Coconino sun., 1891-05-23
THE DEADLY BACTERIA.
Minute Organisms That Cause Certain
 Disea ses in the Human system.

Diseases in the Human system.
 it has been learned within the past few years that several of the most serious diseases known to man are caused by particular species of bacteria, says T. Mitchell Prudden in Harper's. Some diseases are called infectious. Among those forms which thus origin ate are tuberculosis, Asiatic cholera, erysipelas, and some forms of blood poisoning, tetanus or lockjaw, and some forms of pneumonia, typhoid fever, and diphtheria. We know the germs which arc concerned in the causation of these diseases, and esn grow them in tubes in the laborats ? z and work out their life history.
 Malaria it has been pretty well established, is due to minute organ ism which belongs not among the plants, but low down in the animal series, in the class known as protozoa, and it may be that some or all of the last group above-mentioned may be caused by similar organisms which, as yet we can not cultivate in the labor atory or even bring within our vision with the microscope.
 Consumption, or tuberculosis, is largely spread by the specific bacteria in the sputum thrown off by affected persons, which is allowed to dry and become disseminated in the floating dust Typhoid fever is communicated by the germs discharged from the bodies of those Ill of this disease, which, in one way or another but largely in polluted water and food, get into the digestive tract of well persons. DiphtheIfa may be communicated in like manner by the germs in the mem- branes or fluids from the month of the stricken ones, and may finger long, wholly dry, in garments and house ehold furniture and rooms.
 The bacterium causing tetanus or lockjaw, is not often conveyed from one person to another, but is excep- tional in having its usual lurking-place in the soil of certain regions.
 Now, how do these particular species of germs cause these special forms of disease? We have already seen that one of the marked life features of bac- teria is that when they assimilate nour- ishment and grow they set free various forms of chemical substances. When putrefaction occurs in bit of meat, for example, certain bad-smelling gases, as well as a host of other substances, set free by the bacteria which are feed ingon the meat This causes its putre- faction. Each species acts in its own peculiar fashion in the requirement of its food and sets free its own peculiar chemical substances.
 Now, the same thing happens when bacteria, in one way or another get into the bodies of men or animals and grow there. But in the large. propor- tion of cases the bacteria which we take into our bodies in vast numbers with the greatest varieties of uncooked foods and with water and milk, pro- duce, If they grow at all, chemical substances which do no manner of harm. It is indeed not at all improb- able that some bacteria which are con- stantly present in the digestive canal form, under ordinary circumstances. materials which aid in the process of digestion.
 It has, however, come about in the lapse of ages that very few, an in- finitely small proportion, of all the bacteria which are about us produce chemical substances in the body, which, in one way or another, act as violent poisons. These substances, produced by bacteria, are called ptomaines, and here, at last our plummet seems to be striking bottom. It is the ptomaines, or peculiar vegetable poisons pro- duced by these germs, which usually do the damage. Sometimes these ptomaines are produced in some special part of the body where the bacteria grow, and gaining access to body fluids, are carried all over the organism, inducing in the most vulner- able parts those changes which are characteristic of the disease and which give rise to what we call its symptoms. This seems to be the case in diphtheriG and typhoid fever, in which the bac- teria are confined, in the former usual ly to the mouth, and throat, and air passages, and in the latter to the in testinal canal. But the soluble ptomaines are carried everywhere, working havoc.