The bacteria most interesting to the surgeon belong to the cocci and the bacilli. There are other forms which bacteriologists have dubbed with similar descriptive names, but they are more interesting to the physician than to the surgeon. Many micro-organisms, whether cocci, bacilli, or of other shapes, are harmless, hence they are called non-pathogenic, to distinguish them from the disease-producing or pathogenic germs.
As many trees have the same shape and a similar method of growing, but bear different fruits—in the one case edible and in the other poisonous—so, too, bacteria may look alike to the microscopist's eye, and grow much in the same way, but one will cause no disease, while the other will produce perhaps tuberculosis of the lungs or brain.
Many scores of bacteria have been, by patient study, differentiated from their fellows and given distinctive names. Their nomenclature corresponds in classification and arrangement with the nomenclature adopted in different departments of botany. Thus we have the pus-causing chain coccus (streptococcus pyogenes), so-called because it is globular in shape, because it grows with the individual plants attached to each other, or arranged in a row like a chain of beads on a string, and because it produces pus. In a similar way we have the pus-causing grape coccus of a golden color (staphylococcus pyogenes aureus). It grows with the individual plants arranged somewhat after the manner of a bunch of grapes, and when millions of them are collected together, the mass has a golden yellow hue. Again, we have the bacillus tuberculosis, the rod-shaped plant which is known to cause tuberculosis of the lungs, joints, brain, etc.
It is hardly astonishing that these fruitful sources of disease have so long remained undetected, when their microscopic size is borne in mind. That some of them do cause disease is indisputable, since bacteriologists have, by their watchful and careful methods, separated almost a single plant from its surroundings and congeners, planted it free from all contamination, and observed it produce an infinitesimal brood of its own kind. Animals and patients inoculated with the plants thus cultivated have rapidly become subjects of the special disease which the particular plant was supposed to produce.
The difficulty of such investigation becomes apparent when it is remembered that under the microscope many of these forms of vegetable life are identical in appearance, and it is only by observing their growth when in a proper soil that they can be distinguished from each other. In certain cases it is quite difficult to distinguish them by the physical appearances produced during their growth. Then it is only after an animal has been inoculated with them that the individual parasite can be accurately recognized and called by name. It is known then by the results which it is capable of producing.
The various forms of bacteria are recognized, as I have said, by their method of growth and by their shape. Another means of recognition is their individual peculiarity of taking certain dyes, so that special plants can be recognized, under the microscope, by the color which a dye gives to them, and which they refuse to give up when treated with chemical substances which remove the stain from, or bleach, all the other tissues which at first have been similarly stained.
The similarity between bacteria and the ordinary plants with which florists are familiar is, indeed, remarkable. Bacteria grow in animal and other albuminous fluids; but it is just as essential for them to have a suitable soil as it is for the corn or wheat that the farmer plants in his field. By altering the character of the albuminous fluid in which the micro-organism finds its subsistence, these small plants can be given a vigorous growth, or may be actually starved to death. The farmer knows that it is impossible for him to grow the same crop year after year in the same field, and he is, therefore, compelled to rotate his crops. So it is with the microscopic plants which we are considering.
After a time the culture fluid or soil becomes so exhausted of its needed constituents, by the immense number of plants living in it, that it is unfit for their life and development. Then this particular form will no longer thrive; but some other form of bacterium may find in it the properties required for functional activity, and may grow vigorously. It is probable that exhaustion or absence of proper soil is an important agent in protecting man from sickness due to infection from bacteria. The ever-present bacteria often gain access to man's blood through external wounds, or through the lungs and digestive tracts; but unless a soil suited for their development is found in its fluids, the plants will not grow. If they do not grow and increase in numbers, they can do little harm.
Again, there are certain bacteria which are so antagonistic to each other that it is impossible to make them grow in company, or to co-exist in the blood of the same individual. For example, an animal inoculated with erysipelas germs cannot be successfully inoculated immediately afterward with the germs of malignant pustule. This antagonism is illustrated by the impossibility of having a good crop of grain in a field overrun with daisies.
On the other hand, however, there are some micro-organisms which flourish luxuriantly when planted together in the same fluid, somewhat after the manner of pumpkins and Indian corn growing between the same fence rails. Others seem unwilling to grow alone, and only flourish when planted along with other germs. It is very evident, therefore, that bacteriology is a branch of botany, and that nature shows the same tendencies in these minute plants as it does in the larger vegetable world visible to our unaided eyes.