Fungal infection

“ When the disease-producing bacteria gain access to the tissues and blood of human and other animals by means of wounds, or through an inflamed pulmonary or alimentary mucous membrane, they produce pathological effects, provided there is not sufficient resistance and health power in the animal's tissues to antagonize successfully the deleterious influence of the invading parasitic fungus. It is the rapid multiplication of the germs which furnishes a continuous irritation that enables them to have such a disastrous effect upon the tissues of the animal. ”

“ “I say, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.’ We cannot force perfection on the world. Were vaccination of any avail, I should tremble for mankind; but, knowing it is not, and that the fear of catching smallpox is more dangerous than any material infection, I say: Where vaccination is compulsory, let your children be vaccinated, and see that your mind is in such a state that by your prayers vaccination will do the children no harm. So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much. ”

“ The immediate cause of the pathogenic influence is probably the chemical excretions which are given out by these microscopic organisms. All plants and animals require a certain number of substances to be taken into their organisms for preservation of their vital activities. After these substances have been utilized there occurs a sort of excretion of other chemical products. It is probably the excretions of many millions of micro-organisms, circulating in the blood, which give rise to the disease characteristic of the fungus with which the animal has been infected. ”

“ It is these tubes, and the spores thrown from them, which you see forming a kind of halo round the dead fly as it clings to the pane. Other fungi in the same way kill the silkworm and the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly. Nor is it only the lower animals which suffer. When we once realise that fungus spores are floating everywhere in the air, we can understand how the terrible microscopic fungi called bacteria will settle on an open wound and cause it to fester if it is not properly dressed. ”

“ All philanthropy—no age has seen more of it than our own—is only a savoury fumigation burning at the mouth of a sewer. This incense offering makes the air more endurable for passers-by, but it does not hinder the infection in the sewer from spreading. ”

“ But like infection is the petty thought: it creepeth and hideth, and wanteth to be nowhere—until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection. ”

“ Etiology.—The disease is caused by the penetration of certain species of fungi into the tissues of the foot, although rarely the hand or some other part of the body may be affected. These species of fungus develop in granulomatous areas from which sinuses lead to the surface of the foot, in the discharges from which are found small granules resembling those found in the discharges from actinomycosis lesions.
As a rule only one kind of fungus is found in a single case. ”

“ To sunshine we fly from too piercing an air;
But love's ardent fire burns always the same,
No winter can cool it, no summer inflame.
But see the pale moon, all clouded, retires;
The breezes grow cool, not Strephon's desires:
I fly from the dangers of tempest and wind,
Yet nourish the madness that preys on my mind.
Ah, wretch! how can life be worthy thy care? ”

“ Under the microscope you clearly perceive that these insects have organs, orifices, excrement; they do, most emphatically, copulate. Escorted on the one side by the Bos or Warble, on the other by the Hessian Fly, Miss Ormerod advanced statelily, if slowly, into the open. Never did her features show more sublime than when lit up by the candour of her avowal. “This is excrement; these, though Ritzema Bos is positive to the contrary, are the generative organs of the male. I’ve proved it.” ”

“ A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it —which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once. ”

“ Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast:
O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!
Ever blooming are the joys of heaven's high Paradise,
Cold age deafs not there our ears nor vapour dims our eyes:
Glory there the sun outshines; whose beams the Blessed only see:
O come quickly, glorious Lord, and raise my sprite to Thee! ”

“ Whether the glad flames sport amid the long dry grass of last year, or the plough turn up a deep layer of the exhaustless soil, or flocks of prairie-chickens fly up from every little valley, images of life, joy, and plenty belong to the scene. The summer flowers are not more cheerful than the spring blaze, the spring blackness of richness, or the spring whirr and flutter. The sky is alive with the return of migratory birds, swinging back and forth, as if hesitating where to choose, where all is good. ”

“ And slender forms of nuns, that weep
In moonlight by the murmuring deep.
When fancy moulds upon the mind
Light visions on the passing wind,
And woos, with faltering tongue and sigh,
The shades o'er memory's wilds that fly. ”

“ And you, my Love, as high as heaven above,
Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain,
Ascend to heaven in honour of my love.
Were I as high as heaven above the plain,
And you, my Love, as humble and as low
As are the deepest bottoms of the main,
Wheresoe'er you were, with you my love should go.
Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the skies,
My love should shine on you like to the Sun,
And look upon you with ten thousand eyes,
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done. ”

“ There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. ”

“ There, hour by hour, the lazy tide creeps in
Upon the sands I shall not pace again —
Save in a dream, — and, hour by hour, the tide
Creeps lazily out, and I behold it not,
Nor the young moon slow sinking to her rest
Behind the hills; nor yet the dead white trees
Glimmering in the starlight: they are ghosts
Of what has been, and shall be never more.
No, never more!
Nor shall I hear again
The wind that rises at the dead of night
Suddenly, and sweeps inward from the sea,
Rustling the tussock, nor the wekas' wail
Echoing at evening from the tawny hills. ”

“ Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease Natásha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine—not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors ”

“ Call to the soul, when man doth sleep:
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
If a star were confin'd into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that lock'd her up gives room,
She'll shine through all the sphere.
O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under Thee! ”

“ What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. ”

“ In soothing murmurs to complain;
My tongue some secret magic ties,
My murmurs sink in broken sighs!
Condemn'd to nurse eternal care,
And ever drop the silent tear,
Unheard I mourn, unknown I sigh,
Unfriended live, unpitied die! ”

“ In every eye, but in my thoughts most fair.
Like tapers on the altar shine her eyes;
Her breath is the perfume of sacrifice;
And wheresoe'er my fancy would begin,
Still her perfection lets religion in.
We sit and talk, and kiss away the hours
As chastely as the morning dews kiss flowers:
I touch her, like my beads, with devout care,
And come unto my courtship as my prayer. ”

“ In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease—a terrible passing inclination to die of it. ”

“ We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. ”

“ A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. ”

“ And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
Where the trees are swinging their arms about.
Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
Has come from the world of memory!
You are out evermore! God wills it so! ”

“ It terrifies one to think for how short a time science has been methodical and of useful industry; and after all, is there anything on earth more marvelously easy than destruction? Who knows the new mediums it has laid in store? Who knows the limit of cruelty to which the art of poisoning may go? Who knows if they will not subject and impress epidemic disease as they do the living armies—or that it will not emerge, meticulous, invincible, from the armies of the dead? ”

“ To list all the great discoveries in the field of science and medicine during the past century, such as aspirin, insulin, penicillin, and the streptomycin drugs would require the undivided attention of a medical historian and a veritable encyclopedia to record them.
And yet, there are still many diseases that plague man of which he has no knowledge. They eat and ravage his mind and body with excruciating pain and torture, and he is utterly helpless against [Pg 49] them. ”

“ Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greater average age, and our greater protection from contagious and germ diseases. ”

“ All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! ”

“ Come to my arms; for you alone
Can all my absence past atone.
O come! and to my bleeding heart
The sovereign balm of love impart;
Thy presence lasting joy shall bring,
And give the year eternal spring. ”

“ “It’s an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the shafts of disease, as somebody said,—and I think it a very good expression myself.” ”

“ The diseases which are hard to cure in neighbourhoods such as those to which I have referred above are catarrh, hoarseness, coughs, pleurisy, consumption, spitting of blood, and all others that are cured not by lowering the system but by building it up. They are hard to cure, first, because they are originally due to chills; secondly, because the patient's system being already exhausted by disease, the air there, which is in constant agitation owing to winds and therefore deteriorated, takes all the sap of life out of their diseased bodies and leaves them more meagre every day. ”

“ But now a brow of gloom
Pourtrays, in characters of care,
That it is pleasure's tomb.
Yet none shall hear the sigh
That struggles to be free,
No tear shall trace this sallow cheek,
Nor murmur burst from me. ”

“ These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them — not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
But here in the dust, in the shadow, with a sudden wild leap of the heart
I kneel to tenderly kiss them, then in silence arise to depart.
I linger awhile at the portal with the light of the crimsoning sun
On my wreathless brow bearing the badges of battles I've fought in not won. ”

“ As a means of variation from a normal type, sickness in childhood ought to have a certain value not to be classed under any fitness or unfitness of natural selection; and especially scarlet fever affected boys seriously, both physically and in character, though they might through life puzzle themselves to decide whether it had fitted or unfitted them for success; ”

“ But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes: never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry
A glimpse of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,
And a fierce fever must calcine
The body of this world—like thine,
My little world! That fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our souls' bliss: then we shall rise
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.
Meantime thou hast her, earth: much good
May my harm do thee! ”