An authority says, “The most widely distributed pathogenic microörganism (disease-causing bacterium) in the air is the tubercle bacillus, the cause of consumption and a large variety of other ailments, such as hipjoint disease, caries of the spine, etc. Over one hundred thousand persons die annually from consumption alone in the United States, and it is estimated that there are over two million people afflicted with the disease in one form or another. All of these sufferers are expectorating billions of tubercle bacilli daily.”
Considering the second inquiry as to how infection affects the body, we must constantly bear in mind that a bacterium, though a scavenger, is a conservator of nature. Its real function in the orderly processes of animal and vegetable life is to utilize waste for the preservation and promotion of animal and vegetable life on this planet where the conditions are so favorable to both.
Therefore, wherever we find bacteria in the active processes of growth, that is, multiplication, we may be assured that they have found matter that should be rescued from waste and converted into useful food for plants. It follows that when we find a bacterium actively growing in any part of our bodies, it has found some form of decaying matter that is not only no longer useful to our bodies, but is in fact harmful and should be removed.
It is also important to understand that waste matter is found under a great variety of conditions, and that for its proper conversion into useful food for plants there must be a correspondingly large number of species of bacteria each having its special field of operation. It is due to this variety of bacteria that there are so many infective diseases; for each species of bacteria creates its own individual form of disease.
This statement requires the following explanation, viz., a bacterium in a quiescent state is harmless; everyone has within his body innumerable bacteria, as the tubercle and typhoid bacilli; but they are inert, and hence innocuous. It is only when they find their proper food, decaying matter, that they begin to multiply, and in that act they secret a poison, toxin, which is absorbed, and, entering the circulation, causes in the individual a special class of symptoms peculiar to that toxin, or poison.