A text-book upon the pathogenic bacteria : for students of medicine and physicians / by Joseph McFarland.

  • McFarland, Joseph, 1868-1945.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book upon the pathogenic bacteria : for students of medicine and physicians / by Joseph McFarland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ordinary chemic transformation of certain substances, tak- ing place as the result of the action of living cells, and that the capacity to produce it resides in all animal and vegetable cells, though in varying degree. In 1862 he published a paper “On the Organized Cor¬ puscles Existing in the Atmosphere,” in which he showed that many of the floating particles collected from the atmos¬ phere of his laboratory were organized bodies. If these were planted in sterile infusions, abundant crops of micro¬ organisms were obtained. By the use of more refined methods he repeated the experiments of others, and showed clearly that “the cause which communicated life to his in¬ fusions came from the air, but was not evenly distributed through it.” Three years later he showed that the organized cor¬ puscles which he had found in the air were the spores or seeds of minute plants, and that many of them possessed the property of withstanding the temperature of boiling water—a property which explained the peculiar results of many previous experimenters, who failed to prevent the development of life in boiled liquids inclosed in her¬ metically sealed flasks. Chevreul and Pasteur, by having proved that animal solids do not putrefy or decompose if kept free from the access of germs, suggested to surgeons that putrefaction in wounds is due rather to the entrance of something from without than to changes within. The deadly nature of the discharges from putrescent wounds had been shown in a rough manner by Gaspard as early as 1822 by injecting some of the material into the veins of animals. III. MEDICAL AND SURGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS * THE STUDY OF THE INFECTIOUS DISEASES. Probably the first writing in which a direct relationship between micro-organisms and disease is suggested is by Varro, who says: “It is also to be noticed, if there be any marshy places, that certain minute animals breed [there] which are invisible to the eye, and yet, getting into the system through mouth and nostrils, cause serious disorders (diseases which are difficult to treat).” Surgical methods of treatment depending for their suc¬ cess upon exclusion of the air, and of course, incidentally if unknowingly, exclusion of bacteria, seem to have been