Different groups and races among the bacteria have different habitations, and vary widely in their special powers. Complex and powerful as is the aggregate result which they accomplish in the world, the performances of the individual are comparatively simple. They are most liberally endowed with the capacity for multiplication, and each germ acts as a tiny chemical laboratory, taking into itself the organic matter on which it feeds, and resolving it into new compounds. Some of the latter are used in building up and maintaining its own body, while others are given off into the surrounding media.
We are but just beginning to peer at the mysterious processes which go on under the influence of the bacteria in this underworld of life, and to realize that all the lore which unwearied toilers in the past have gathered in their studies of the visible forms of animals and plants, makes but one of the many chapters in nature's story-book of life.
But this new and stimulating point of view, toward which the studies of the past decade have led us, does not look so largely into the domain of the practical that it would greatly attract the majority of business and pleasure and _ennui_ ridden mankind were it not for one very practical fact which these recent studies have revealed. This is, that among the myriads of altogether beneficent bacteria which people the earth, and air, and water, there are a few forms which have chosen out of all the world as their most congenial residence the bodies of men. But even this would be of only passing interest to most people were it not still further unfortunately true that in the performance of their simple life-processes these man-loving bacteria, feeding on the tissues of their host, and setting free certain subtle poisons in his blood, each after its kind, can induce those disturbances of the body's functions and those changes in its structure which we call disease.
The diseases caused by the growth of germs in the body are called infectious. The germs causing some of the infectious diseases are given off from the bodies of their victims in such form as to be readily transmitted through the air to others, in whom they may incite similar disease. Such diseases are spoken of as readily communicable, though it is not actually the disease itself, but only the germ causing it, which is transmitted. In other infectious diseases transmission but rarely occurs. Many infectious diseases are very easily communicated from the sick to the well under unsanitary and uncleanly conditions, which with proper care are very little liable to spread.