Bactria

“ Laws of the Bactrians.—Among the Bactrians, who are called Cashani, the women adorn themselves with the goodly raiment of men, and with much gold, and with costly jewels; and the slaves and handmaids minister to them more than to their husbands; and they ride on horses decked out with trapping of gold and with precious stones. ”

“ Next to them are the Bactrians, a nation formerly very warlike and powerful, and always hostile to the Persians, till they drew all the nations around under their dominion, and united them under their own name; and in old time the Bactrian kings were formidable even to Arsaces.
56. The greater part of their country, like that of the Margiani, is situated far from the sea-shore, but its soil is fertile, and the cattle which feed both on the plains and on the mountains in that district are very large and powerful ”

“ Now Bactriana stretches 1000 stadia farther north. Beyond this the Scythians occupy a much larger territory, bounded by the Northern Ocean: here they dwell, though to be sure theirs is a nomade life. But we ask how they could exist here at all, supposing even Bactra to be beyond the limits of the habitable globe. ”

“ Then Arbaces was of opinion that they must go to meet the Bactrians with the best and bravest warriors, and if they could not be persuaded to join the rebellion, they must be compelled to do so by force of arms. First, the leaders of the Bactrians listened to the proposal for liberation, and then the soldiers also, so that the Bactrians united with the rest. The king of the Assyrians knew nothing of the defection of the Bactrians, and, misled by his good fortune, gave himself over to indolence. ”

“ He has, however, mis-translated the passage, which gives 5600 stadia, or 700 miles exactly, as stated by Pliny.
255 Or 1960 miles.
256 Bactra, Bactrum, or Bactrium, was one of the chief cities, if not the capital, of the province of Bactriana. It was one of the most ancient cities in the world, and the modern Balkh is generally supposed to occupy its site. Strabo, as well as Pliny, evidently considers that Bactra and Zareispa were the same place, while Appian distinguishes between the two, though he does not clearly state their relative positions. ”

“ Cicero, bk. 1, de Divinatione, ch. 34.――A king of Corinth, called also Bacchis. See: Bacchis.――An athlete of Trœzene. Pausanias, bk. 6.
Bactra (orum) , now Balk, the capital of Bactriana, on the river Bactros in Asia. Virgil, Georgics, bk. 2, li. 138.—Strabo, bk. 2.
Bactri and Bactriāni, the inhabitants of Bactriana, who lived upon plunder, and were always under arms. They gave to their dogs those that died through old age or disease, and suffered slaves and strangers to take whatever liberties they pleased with their wives. They were conquered by Alexander the Great. Curtius, bk. ”

“ By examining microscopically a drop of this broth culture the bacilli are seen in active movement, swarming at the margins of the drop, interspersed with the spiral threads, which are also apparently mobile. They grow also in other fluids, e. g., very abundantly in milk, without coagulating it or changing its appearance. Also in blood serum they grow very richly. Another good nutrient medium is gelatine, wherein the comma bacilli form colonies of a perfectly characteristic kind, different from those of any other form of bacteria. ”

“ It was found that typhoid, cholera, and various other bacilli were most deleteriously affected by insolation. Perhaps an example will best serve to illustrate the nature of the results obtained. Some boiled water contained in a flask was inoculated with an immense number of a bacillus, closely resembling the typhoid organism, normally present in the body and frequently found in water, the bacillus coli communis. So many were introduced that nearly one hundred thousand individuals were present in every twenty drops of the water. ”

“ Contagion may take place both by introduction into wounds, and from the mucous membrane of the intestines or lungs, both by vegetative cells and by spores; in intestinal anthrax, however, only by spores. The Bacillus multiplies as soon as it has entered the blood, and the anthrax disease commences. The Bacilli not only give off poison, [40] but also deprive the blood of its oxygen. Vegetative cells only occur in living animals. This species is a facultative parasite which in the first stage is a saprophyte, and only in this condition forms spores. ”

“ We shall never know [319] now, I hope, the history of the plague organism. It was never studied under the microscope—we were too busy—and now we trust that the bacillus—if it were a bacillus—has encompassed its own destruction. What interests you, however, is that this sudden, miraculously sudden, development of its deadly power as regards humanity ran through a determinable cycle of evolution. From what you’ve told us, already, it seems clear, I think, that even in England the bacillus was losing what I may call its effectiveness. ”

“ There are no spores. Motility is marked; indeed, in young culture it is the most active pathogenic germ we know. The small forms dart about with extreme rapidity; the longer forms move in a vermicular manner. Its powers of movement are due to some five to twenty flagella of varying length, some of them being much longer than the bacillus itself, though, owing to the swelling of the bacillus under flagellum-staining methods,57 it is difficult to gauge this exactly. The flagella are terminal and lateral, and are elastic and wavy. ”

“ Like any other seed, this bacillus requires a suitable soil and favorable climate, to bring out its most destructive development. In striking the balance, we have to guard against the error of so many, who would attribute to the germ alone the deadly results and who assume that these should be the same under all conditions, and the opposite error no less prevalent, that ascribes the evil to the conditions, and holds that without these the germ would be harmless. ”

“ Further, we find that the same species of bacterium may have varying powers of producing disease at different times. Some species are universal inhabitants of the alimentary canal and are ordinarily harmless, while under other conditions of unknown character they invade the tissues and give rise to a serious and perhaps fatal disease. We may thus recognise some bacteria which may be compared to foreign invaders, while others are domestic enemies. The former, like the typhoid bacillus, always produce trouble when they succeed in entering the body and finding a foothold. ”

“ From the under-surface of the oil, if the bacillus be that of plague, stalactite-like growths of bacilli will form. When disturbed, the stalactite growths break off and fall in snow-like flakes to the bottom of the vessel. No other known bacillus behaves in this way. (See p. 325.) In case of doubt, animal inoculation should be had recourse to: a little of the virus from the patient or a culture is rubbed into a shaven area (1 in. square) on the abdomen of a white rat or a guineapig. ”

“ By experimental inoculation of soil with broth cultures, he was able to isolate the bacillus twelve months after, alive and virulent. He concludes that the typhoid organism is capable of growing very rapidly in certain soils, and under certain circumstances can survive from one summer to another. The rains of spring and autumn or the frosts and snows of winter do not kill them off so long as there is sufficient organic pabulum. Sunlight, the bactericidal power of which is well known, had, as would be expected, no effect except upon the bacteria directly exposed to its rays. ”

“ The size of the plague bacillus varies, and bacilli of same character, but of less virulent nature, have been found in the soil of infected places. Some bacteriologists observed some development after death in the bacilli, this, if confirmed by observations at Bombay, will be highly interesting from a bacteriological point of view. If mice, rats, guinea-pigs and rabbits are inoculated with the plague bacillus, they soon become infected and die, and in their internal organs the same bacilli are found. ”

“ Key to the Genera of Bactridinae Trunk small, cespitose; leaves separated by long internodes; foramina of seeds apical.
Bactris. Trunk medium or large, solitary; leaves crowded together at the summit; foramina peripheral.
Trunk slender; leaf-divisions broad, praemorse-truncate; pistillate and staminate flowers intermixed on the inflorescence; exocarp fleshy.
Curima. Trunk robust; leaf-divisions narrow, sharp-pointed; pistillate flowers below and separate from the staminate; exocarp fibrous.
Acrocomia. BACTRIS Jacquin, Stirp. Am. 279. pl. 271. ”

“ It is now impossible to say why such different types of male humanity as Jasper Thrale, George Gosling or the Bacchus of Wycombe Abbey escaped the plague. The bacillus (surely a strangely individual type, it must have been) was never isolated, nor the pathology of the disease investigated. The germ was some new unprecedented growth which ran through a fierce cycle of development within a few months, changed its nature as it swarmed into every corner of the earth, and finally expired more quickly than it had come into being. ”

“ It becomes obvious, then, that in doubtful cases we ought not to rely very strongly upon the character of their movements, as evidence of the death of Bacteria—although these may frequently be of so extensive a nature as to render it not at all doubtful whether the Bacteria which display them are living. In the experiments which I am about to relate, we shall be able to pronounce that the Bacteria are living or dead, by reference to the continuance or cessation of their most essentially vital characteristic. ”

“ But, certain indirect evidence seems to speak most authoritatively against the supposition that the air contains any notable quantity of living Bacteria, or Bacteria germs, whether visible or invisible. I have always found that a simple solution of ammonic tartrate, which has been placed—without previous boiling—in a corked bottle of greater capacity, will become turbid in two or three days, owing to the presence of myriads of Bacteria ”

“ Indeed, even after invasion the infectivity of the special disease, whatever it happens to be, will be materially modified by the tissues. When we come to turn to the micro-organisms which are pathogenic parasites we shall further have to keep clear in our minds that their action is double and complex, and not single or simple. In the first place, we have an infection of the body due to the bacteria themselves. It may be a general and widespread infection, as in anthrax, where the bacilli pass, in the blood or lymph current, to each and every part of the body ”

“ In places they are so densely packed as to form obstructions to the onward flow of blood. In cultures they are in chains end to end, having as a rule equal interbacillary spaces. In cultures long filaments and threads occur. The exact shape of the bacillus depends, however, upon two things: the staining and spore formation. Both these factors may very materially modify the normal shape. The spores of anthrax are oval endospores, produced only in the presence of free oxygen, and at any temperature between 18 and 41° C. On account of requiring free oxygen, they are formed only outside the body. ”

“ The serum of an animal injected with one strain will agglutinate bacilli of another in high dilutions. Even the serological tests of patients suffering from dysentery caused by one type of bacillus give uncertain results. Penfold and others have shown that cultural reactions which are constant for one type of bacillus can be made to vary by growing the same bacillus under different conditions, and even passage through the intestinal tract of a fly may exert a temporary influence on their power of fermentation (Bahr) . ”

“ This disease is due to the presence of large numbers of Bacillus solanacearum in the tubes through which water is conveyed to the leaves from the roots. Their presence causes the appearance of blackish streaks in the stem and a dark ring some little distance below the surface in the tissues of the tuber. Tubers showing any trace of such a ring should not be used for seed, and rotation of crops should be observed as a means of preventing the infection of the crop with the germ. Biting and sucking insects have been found to carry the bacilli from one plant to another. ”

“ The bacillus was first detected in the blood of patients suffering from the disease. It takes the form of a small, round-ended, oval cell, with marked polar staining, and hence having an appearance not unlike a diplococcus. In the middle there is a clear interspace, and the whole is surrounded with a thick capsule, stained only with difficulty. The organisms are often linked together in pairs or even chains, and exhibit involution forms. In culture the bacillus is even more coccal in form than in the body. ”

“ Young individuals are stained by Gram's method; older individuals are, however, Gram negative. The optimum temperature is 112° F. Kuntze attempted to isolate the organisms mentioned by Luerssen and Kühn, and by plate culture procured growth of a spore-forming bacillus similar to Weigmann's Bacillus matzoon. To this organism is attributed the power to impart a specific taste to the matzoon, but as growth is comparatively slow, it can only be of significance in determining the quality of the curd and cheese prepared from this product. ”