Organic disease

“ It is rather remarkable, that the lower forms of vegetables and animals seem to derive their nutriment from matter of a similar kind; and though the office of plants is as a rule, to convert inorganic into organized matter, it appears that some of the fungi may live as animals do on organic matter when in a state of solution. This, however, is uncertain; for we do not know what are the first signs of decomposition in organized bodies, and for aught we can tell, it may be perpetually going on; so far as the disengagement of carbon from the system is concerned, this is certain ”

“ Not only in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, nor even in the various applications of preventive medicine, but in ever-increasing degree and sphere, micro-organisms are recognised as agents of utility or otherwise no longer to be ignored. They occur in our drinking water, in our milk supply, in the air we breathe. They ripen cream, and flavour butter. They purify sewage, and remove waste organic products from the land. They are the active agents in a dozen industrial fermentations. They assist in the fixation of free nitrogen, and they build up assimilable compounds. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the specific germ, which has not yet been demonstrated, is able to multiply external to the bodies of infected individuals, and, consequently, conditions relating to soil, moisture, temperature, and organic decomposition are apparently without influence in the development of the disease, except in so far as they affect the predisposition of those exposed to infection. Insanitary surroundings no doubt constitute a predisposing cause by lowering the vital resisting power of those exposed to such influences. ”

“ The rule is, therefore, that an ordinary soil consists of upper strata, rich in organic materials and in oxygen, and a subsoil, poorer in these substances.
Among these organic materials are countless myriads of living beings, especially fungi and bacteria, which require oxygen and organic materials for their subsistence, and it depends on the open or close, moderately moist or damp, warm or cold nature of the soil, and on some obviously connected factors, how far down these aërobic organisms can thrive. ”

“ The partially decomposed elements of animal structures are, however, particularly adapted for the nutrition of the lower forms of vegetation; it is, indeed, from the decaying organic matters that the fungi derive, it may be said, their entire food. ”

“ We find, moreover, that the disease is always most prevalent where agriculture is in its most primitive condition, so that there can be little doubt of the prevalence of the affection in the less-civilized countries as well. But while the disease is prevalent in all parts of the world, its ravages are largely subordinate to the nature of the soil. Wherever this is close, impervious, marshy, or charged with an excess of organic matters, the gaseous emanations of which drive out most of the oxygen, the anthrax-germs, once introduced, tend to be preserved indefinitely. ”

“ In localities where heat and marshes abound, water may often be colored by organic acids and other substances which dissolves, and yet not be appreciably unhealthy. Such waters are common in some countries, and present dangerous possibilities, should fermentation and putrefaction at any time set in. Decaying fish and animals, leaves, &c., &c., form the ordinary and accidental organic impurities of water. These are unhealthy not only in themselves, but especially because they offer to the germs of disease or pestilence a harbor and sustenance. ”

“ Law states that the disease has been attributed to excess of organic matter in the soil, to succulent watery foods, as rank watery grasses, potatoes, turnips and other roots deficient in nutritious solids. ”

“ The organisms may come from the air, the soil or from animal sources. The air teems with organisms which settle and may develop when brought upon a favourable nidus; the organic matter of the soil largely consists of fungoid life; while the intestinal canal and other mucous membranes of all animals harbour bacteria, sarcinae and other organisms in countless millions. Whenever, therefore, food material is exposed to the air, or touched by the soil or by animals or man, it becomes infected with living cells, which by their development lead to its decomposition and destruction. ”

“ The presence of especially nitrogenous organic matter is a serious source of danger, inasmuch as such matter forms the natural food or soil for the development of micro-organisms, including those kinds of bacteria which are now supposed to propagate infectious diseases. ”

“ These bacteria are not a fertilizer in any ordinary sense, but they are more in the nature of a disease, a kind of tuberculosis, as it were; except that they do much more good than harm. They attack the very tender young roots of the alfalfa and feed upon the nutritious sap, taking from it the phosphorus and other minerals and also the sugar or other carbohydrates needed for their own nourishment, since they have no power to secure carbon and oxygen from the air, as is done by all plants with green leaves. ”

“ The great host of species which are found in water, milk, air, in our mouths or clinging to our skin, and which are almost omnipresent in Nature, are capable of growing well enough in ordinary lifeless organic foods, but just as soon as they succeed in finding entrance into living human tissue their growth is checked at once by these antiseptic agents which are poured upon them. Such bacteria are therefore not pathogenic germs, and not sources of trouble to human health. ”

“ By far the most important of the living agencies concerned with the direct production of disease are those small vegetable organisms known as bacteria. Not all bacteria, by any means, produce disease; in fact, it is not too much to say that the majority of bacteria are benefactors to the human race. Their chief agency is not to cause disease, but to prevent it, and they do this because they are able to transform the waste products of animal life, which would normally be dangerous to health, into harmless mineral residue. ”

“ It will produce a bounteous crop of beans in the pure sand of the sea-shore if (and this is an important if) that sand also contains enough of the mineral substances—phosphorus, potassium, and so on—and if it is kept properly watered. A man with a worn-out farm cannot go ahead blindly and inoculate his soil and expect certain results. He must know the exact disease from which his land is suffering before he applies the remedy. If it is deficient in the phosphates, bacteria cultures will not help it, whereas if it is deficient in nitrogen, bacteria are just what it needs. ”

“ Bacteria, archea, and microeukaryotes dominate Earth's habitats, compound recycling, nutrient sequestration, and, according to some estimates, biomass. Microbes are not only ubiquitous, they are essential to all life, as they are the primary source for nutrients, and the primary recyclers of dead matter back to available organic form. Along with all other animals and plants, the human condition is profoundly affected by microbes, from the scourges of human, farm animal, and crop pandemics, to the benefits in agriculture, food industry, and medicine to name a few. ”

“ It is therefore the presence of these organisms which forces him to dry his hay, to smoke his hams, to corn his beef, to keep his fruits and vegetables cool and prevent skin bruises, to ice his dairy, to protect his timber from rain, to use stone instead of wooden foundations for buildings, etc. In general, when the farmer desires to get rid of any organic refuse, he depends upon bacteria, for they are his sole agents (aside from fire) for the final destruction of organic matter. When he wishes to convert waste organic refuse into fertilizing material, he uses the bacteria of his compost heap. ”

“ The sap is to the plant, what the blood is to the animal,—the elements of nutrition and secretion are contained in it, and whatever interferes with its normal constitution by subtracting from, or adding to it, deteriorates its qualities, and retards or accelerates the functions of the individual. Excess or deficiency of the natural elements may also be a source of disturbance; if carbonic acid be too abundantly liberated in the soil, as Dr. Lindley expresses it, "plants become gorged;" and if, on the other hand, the elimination be too slow, they become starved. ”

“ Carpenter, "that the germs liberated by one plant are taken up by the roots of others, and being carried along the current of the sap, are deposited and developed, where vegetation is most active."
The chemical theory of disease would be better sustained by a comparison of "the artificial formation of alkaloids," and the phenomena of transformation of blood into the tissues of animals, and their degeneration into effete matters, and of sap into the tissues of plants and their degenerations. ”

“ The way in which they work is too difficult to explain here, but to get an idea of the romance of the underground world one must try to picture to oneself these swarms and myriads of germs and bacteria all incessantly and busily engaged at their several duties. In the uppermost layers there are probably in a single cubic inch of good soil from 54,000,000 to 400,000,000 of these microbes. Many are absolutely necessary to the harvest; a few may be of little importance, but there are sure to be some of those dangerous sorts which might devastate a continent with disease in a single summer. ”

“ As we have learned, bacteria flourish wherever the food supply is abundant. The water within the jar has come to contain much of the food material which was once within the leaves of the grass,—organic nutrients, starch, sugar, and proteins, formed in the leaf by the action of the sun on the chlorophyll [Pg 164] of the leaf, and now released into the water by the breaking down of the walls of the cells of the leaves. The bacteria themselves release this food from the hay by causing it to decay. After a few days small one-celled animals appear ”

“ Again, probably no one factor of the non-living environment ever suffices to induce a disease, possibly because no such thing as only one change at a time ever occurs. For instance, it is difficult to say, when a soil becomes sodden with water, whether the excess of water and dissolved matters, the want of air displaced by the water, the lowering of the temperature, or the accumulation of foul products, etc., is the principal factor in causing the damage which results, and we have to determine by the balance of experimental evidence which is the dominant factor in all such cases. ”

“ Each of these colonies of germs is under perfect control, and in many of them their natural wickedness has been so much alleviated that they are now useful aids to the doctor, who gives his patient a mild dose of the disease in order to accustom his system to resist accidental infection by the original type.
Yet what has been done already is only an earnest of what will no doubt be accomplished. Every farmer and ploughboy will in time sow his own bacteria; every dairymaid will make all sorts of cheese, from Camembert, Rochfort, to Gorgonzola, by sowing the right kind of germ upon it. ”

“ When we come to enquire into what circumstances bring about those severe and apparently sudden attacks on our crops, orchards, gardens, and forests by hosts of some particular parasite, bringing about all the dreaded features of an epidemic disease, we soon discover the existence of a series of complex problems of intertwined relationships between one organism and another, and between both and the non-living environment, which fully justify the caution already given against concluding that any cause of disease can be a single agent working alone. ”

“ In the case of the decomposition of the woody matter of the tree trunk, the process is begun by the agency of moulds, for this group of organisms alone appears to be capable of attacking such hard woody structure. The later part of the decay, however, is largely carried on by bacterial life. In the decomposition of the animal tissues, bacteria alone are the agents. Thus the process by which organic matter is dissipated into the air or incorporated into the soil is one which is primarily presided over by bacterial life. ”

“ Modern Views of Consumption.—Two things are now believed to be necessary for the production of consumption: the tubercle bacillus and a disordered state of the body, such as to favor its growth—in other words, seed and a fertile soil; and if either is wanting, the disease is not produced. We never know when we may take in the germs on our food or in the air, hence we should see to it that we do not give them a fertile soil. ”

“ Soil.—The soil about dwellings and places where foods are stored frequently becomes polluted with decaying animal and vegetable matter, and in such soils disease-producing organisms readily find lodgment. Poorly drained soils containing an excess of vegetable matter furnish a medium in which the tapeworm and the germs of typhoid fever, lockjaw, and various diseases affecting the digestive tract, may propagate. The wind carries the dust particles from these contaminated places into unprotected food, where they cause fermentation changes and the disease germs multiply. ”

“ While, naturally, the bacteria that do us harm by producing disease are the ones that have attracted our keenest attention and that we talk about most, it must never be forgotten that they form only a very, very small part of the total number of bacteria, or germs. These tiny little germs swarm everywhere; and the mere fact that we find bacteria in any place, or in any substance, is no proof whatever that we are in danger of catching some disease there.
All our farm and garden soil, for instance, is full of bacteria that not only are harmless, but give that soil all its richness, or fertility. ”