Microbes

Leptothrix bloom. A non-pathogen.

[I cannot believe that people]… talk of infection being carried on by the air only, by carrying with it vast numbers of insects and invisible creatures, who enter into the body with the breath, or even at the pores with the air, and there generate or emit most acute poisons, or poisonous ovae or eggs, which mingle themselves with the blood, and so infect the body …
— Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731), A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722, Everyman edition 85.

I have heard it was the opinion of others that it might be distinguished by the party’s breathing upon a piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents and devils, horrible to behold. But this I question very much the truth of, and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make the experiment with.
— Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731), A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722, Everyman edition 229.

… these little animals were, to my eye, more than ten thousand times smaller than the animalcule which Swammerdam has portrayed, and called by the name Water-flea, or Water-louse, which you can see alive and moving in water with the bare eye …
— Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723) Letter 18 to the Royal Society, 9 October 1678, quoted by Boorstin, The Discoverers, 331.

… I arrived, several years ago, at the conclusion that the essential cause of suppuration in wounds is decomposition, brought about by the influence of the atmosphere upon blood or serum retained within them …

But when it had been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic property of the atmosphere depended, not on the oxygen or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles.
— Joseph, Lord Lister (1827 – 1912), ‘On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery’, British Medical Journal, 1867.

But since the antiseptic treatment has been brought into full operation, and wounds and abscesses no longer poison the atmosphere with putrid exhalations, my wards, though in other respects under precisely the same circumstances as before, have completely changed their character; so that during the last nine months not a single instance of pynaemia, hospital gangrene or erysipelas has occurred in them. As there appears to be no doubt regarding the cause of this change, the importance of the fact can hardly be exaggerated.
— Joseph, Lord Lister (1827 – 1912), ‘On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery’, British Medical Journal, 1867.

1.         The organism should always be found present in an animal suffering from the disease being studies, and should never be found in one not suffering from the disease.

2.         The organism must be cultured in a pure culture away from the animal body.

3.         When such a culture is inoculated into a susceptible organism, characteristic disease symptoms should appear.

4.         The organisms reisolated and cultured from the experimental animals should be seen to be the same organism.
— Robert Koch (1843 – 1910) lists his postulates.

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines.
— Holy Bible, Song of Solomon, 2:15.

According to the lichen form that the fungus makes, its reproductive organs, and its spores, there are several hundred genera and several thousand species of lichen fungi, but comparatively few genera and species of lichen algae: they are shared by the fungi.
— E. J. H. Corner, The Life of Plants, 1964, 258.

The Durban declaration, 2000.

* Patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, regardless of where they live, are infected with HIV.

* If not treated, most people with HIV infection show signs of AIDS within 5–10 years. HIV infection is identified in blood by detecting antibodies, gene sequences or viral isolation. These tests are as reliable as any used for detecting other virus infections.

* People who receive HIV-contaminated blood or blood products develop AIDS, whereas those who receive untainted or screened blood do not.

* Most children who develop AIDS are born to HIV-infected mothers. The higher the viral load in the mother, the greater the risk of the child becoming infected.

* In the laboratory, HIV infects the exact type of white blood cell (CD4 lymphocytes) that becomes depleted in people with AIDS.

* Drugs that block HIV replication in the test tube also reduce virus load in people and delay progression to AIDS. Where available, treatment has reduced AIDS mortality by more than 80%.

* Monkeys inoculated with cloned SIV [Simian Immunodeficiency Virus] DNA become infected and develop AIDS.

— The 21^st century equivalent of Koch’s postulates, which could not be applied ethically to HIV studies. It was endorsed by over 5000 medical experts from 83 countries.

Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for a microbe, carrying lethal risks more frightening to them than to us. The man who catches a meningococcus is in considerably less danger for his life, even without chemotherapy, than meningococci with the bad luck to catch a man.
— Lewis Thomas (1913 – 1993), The Lives of a Cell, Penguin Books, 1978, 77.

Every time Homo sapiens made a molecular socket wrench to undo some vital bacterial function, the wily microbes simply changed the vulnerable assembly to a Phillips-headed screw.
— Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague, 432.

My friend Dr Heath was of opinion that it might be known by the smell of their breath; but then, as he said, who durst smell to that breath for his information? since, to know it, he must draw the stench of the plague up into his own brain, in order to distinguish the smell! I have heard it was the opinion of others that it might be distinguished by the party's breathing upon a piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to behold. But this I very much question the truth of, and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make the experiment with.
— Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722.

He prayeth best who loveth best|
All things both great and small.
The Streptococcus is the test,
I love him least of all.
— Hilaire Belloc, Short talks with the dead and others, 1926.

At a recent meeting of the Odessa Medical Society (Proceedings of the Odessa Medical Society, 1886, No. 6, 1–12), Dr. Filipovitch, of the Odessa Town Hospital, made a very instructive communication on six cases of advanced pulmonary phthisis, which had been treated by him after the bacterio-therapeutic method, recommended by Professor Arnaldo Cantani … Having obtained, by fractional cultivation, pure culture of the bacterium termo in meat broth, the author took 5 cubic centimetres of the bacterial fluid diluted them with 10 cubic centimetres of boiled water (37° C.), aromatised the mixture with one or two drops of tincture of peppermint (to disguise an offensive odour), and made the patient inhale the whole by means of Richardson's spray-producer.
— British Medical Journal, 2 October 1886, 641–2.

I think it: only fair to state what has been my experience in five cases subjected to this treatment. I can scarcely say that failure has been the result of my efforts, for in two of the five cases marked improvement resulted, which continues up to the present time.
— A. Primrose Wells, Five Cases Of Pulmonary Phthisis Treated By The "Bacterium Termo" Spray, British Medical Journal, 18 December 1886, 1211–1212.

A bacterium … can be grown on relatively simple mixtures of sterilised nutrients — the tubes of broth and the plates of nutrient agar that are the bacteriologist’s tools of trade. For viruses nothing less than the living cell will serve. An influenza virus can be grown in the nasal passages of a ferret, in the lung of a mouse, in the tissues of a developing chick embryo or in a culture of embryonic cells in a flask, but it will not grow in any non-living material.
— Sir Macfarlane Burnet (1899 – 1984), ‘The Virus’, Scientific American Reader (1953), 335.

Wash the woodwork of the (cow)sheds everywhere with boiling water, containing in each gallon a wineglassful of carbolic acid. Then limewash the walls and roofs of the shed with good, freshly-burnt lime, adding to each pailful of whitewash one pint of carbolic acid. Cleanse the floors thoroughly with hot water, and then sprinkle freely with undiluted carbolic acid. Lastly, close all the doors and openings, and burn sulphur in the shed, taking care that neither men nor animals remain in the shed while the burning is going on.
— Angus Smith and William Crookes, Recommendations for Disinfection, 1866.

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