A still more remarkable feature of the life history of the typhoid bacillus has recently been made public. A typhoid epidemic was traced to a nurse who had attended cases of typhoid fever, but had never suffered from an attack of that disease, and yet was discharging large quantities of the bacilli. These cases can be explained only on the theory that these microörganisms find some place, possibly, as has been suggested, in the gall bladder, where they find food sufficient to keep them in an active state of multiplication, but where the conditions prevent the absorption of the toxins they excrete.
How far these curious incidents in the life of the typhoid bacilli are common to other bacilli is not known; but if it is true of other infectious diseases, the fact will explain the origin of those obscure and mysterious cases that occur without any known exposure to the infection.
[Sidenote: Bacteria Aim to Destroy the Body]
In concluding this inquiry as to the nature of infection and its effects on the body, the following statement of a biologist as to the bacterium seems justified: “When it enters a living body, it aims directly at the destruction of the latter. It multiplies rapidly, tends to scatter its broods throughout the tissues, and all the while gives off the most powerful poisons. This agent is wickedly implacable, neither giving nor asking quarter. The battle that it wages with the body can terminate only by the destruction of one of the combatants.”
Viewed in the light of the past history of infectious diseases, this is not an overdrawn picture. If we estimate the deaths from smallpox in ancient times, from cholera in modern times, and from tuberculosis (consumption) throughout all time, the destruction of human life by bacteria cannot be overstated. The bacterium has been a wickedly implacable foe to the human race in the past. Invisible, intangible, everywhere present, it has proved omnipotent in its destructive attacks upon communities.
But our century opens with a far brighter outlook for the race. Elementary forces which, through ignorance of their true functions in the economy and conservation of nature, were permitted in the past to expend their energy in the destruction of life, have been revealed by science to be man’s most helpful agents in the promotion of comfort, health, and longevity. Electricity was for ages only a thunderbolt, an object of terror, and an agent of destruction, visiting the human residence only to kill its owner and burn the structure.