MICRO-ORGANISMS AND THEIR RELATION TO DISEASE. ADDRESS OF THE RETIRING PRESIDENT, S. P. WISE, M. D., DELIVERED AT THE PUBLIC MEETING OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH HELD AT SPRINGFIELD, O., SEPTEMBER 19, 1889. I have selected for the theme of my address the most interesting and most important subject in the domain of sanitary science; a subject which has recently engaged the attention of more scientific men, and has been cultivated with more zeal and been productive of more fruitful results than any other subject in modern science. The most important of these results for the welfare of mankind is the knowledge that a large proportion of the causes of sickness and death are removable. The study of the disease germ in all its phases is even of greater importance to the sanitarian than to the physician, for the reason that the scientific basis of all preventive measures must be the accurate knowledge of the agencies that produce the disease; and we can never expect to succeed in controlling the ravages of infectious diseases without making ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the living organisms which cause the infection. Fortunately for the health of the people, they long ago recognized the necessity of pure air, pure water, and clean surroundings, but they did not know that when they cleaned up their filth that they simply disposed of the nutriment which served to sustain and favored the propagation of the germs of disease. In attempting to produce a dissertation on the subject of micro-organisms, I found it exceedingly difficult to cull from so large and productive a field-upon which volumes have been written-such salient points only as will prove interesting to the hearer and bring them within the scope of one paper. I will therefore be obliged to omit many of the elementary considerations and some of the most abstruse theories and remote possibilities with which the subject so richly abounds, and will confine myself to the most powerful evidence for the faith that is within us. The so-called germ theory is no longer a theory or a hypothesis, but it is a fact incontestibly proven by the revelations of the microscope and the researches of organic chemistry. It is true that the specific germ of some of the infectious diseases have so far eluded isolation and identification, and their existence is only inferred by analogy. The researches of some of our leading scientists in their efforts to isolate the germs of certain diseases have often led to adverse and contradictory results. This is not at all surprising if we consider their extreme minuteness; and we are certainly justified in inferring their existence, when we have a number of diseases in which the germ can be easily isolated and the identical disease reproduced any number of times, even after the microbe has been preserved and it has remained in a dormant state for a period of years. This has been repeatedly accomplished in anthrax, chicken cholera, and quite recently in tuberculosis. In illustration: Prof. Sternberg, of this country, received from Dr. Burdon Sanderson, of London, a hermetically sealed tube containing a fraction of a grain of dried blood, taken from an animal which had died. of anthrax eight years previously. The material was moistened and a few drops injected beneath the skin of a recently captured mouse. The animal died in a little less than thirty-six hours, and its liver and spleen contained an abundance of the germs peculiar to that disease. A small quantity of blood from a healthy rabbit was inoculated with the spleen of the dead mouse, and two drops of this blood culture injected into a small rabbit and a smaller quantity into another mouse. The mouse died on the following day, and the rabbit three days thereafter. The post mortem examination revealed a great number of the anthrax bacilli in the blood, liver and spleen of both of these animals. Some dried blood. was preserved, and recently, after an interval of three years, this was used to inoculate a rabbit which died on the second day after of the disease, showing conclusively that the germ had lost none of its virulence, after remaining dormant for a number of years. แ After these introductory remarks we shall now proceed to ask: What are these germs or bacteria? Briefly stated, a bacterium is a mass of matter which possesses a definite size and shape, may or may not exhibit motion, has a certain chemical composition and is capable of growth and reproduction—is, in short, a living organism." Their classification embraces a great many varieties of genera, species, tribes and forms, prominent among which are the spherical called micrococci, the rod-shaped, or bacilli, and the spiral-shaped, or spirilli. They are the smallest of all microscopic beings, and range in size from two-tenths of a millimetre to the extreme limits of our highest magnifying power. One of the promi nent characteristics of these lowly organisms is their capacity, under favorable conditions of nutriment and temperature, of rapid and enormous increase of numbers. This occurs by the slight enlargement of |