NEW CHOLERA FACTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6052, 9 November 1906, Page 11

NEW CHOLERA FACTS

Some years ago a. French savant, during an investigation of cholera conditions in the East, made the statement that he could swallow "a mouthful ol the germs without taking the disease itself,’’ a playful boast which, in the opinion of an official of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service at Washington, indicates the advance since made in the'knowledge of germ diseases. Under certain conditions no harm whatever need be feared from swallowing cholera germs. The idea that germs are parasitical creatures which roam through the body, seeking to devour and' destroy, is entirely false. In the first place, germs are not “ani-. Dials,” but vegetable bodies, starting at a minute point and by degrees branching, out over a larger area. Of course, it is eventually possible that by occupying the place of healthy substance in a certain organ such germs may 'obstruct aud even prevent the natural working of the organ, but it is not from this fact alone that we are in danger. Nor is- it because these minute particles of vegetable matter are necessarily poisonous when taken into the system through the air or with food. Were this true the great numbers which continually find entrance into the body would soon prove overwhelming, no matter how great the power of resistance of the system might be. In their growth, however, certain germs manufacture and excrete a substance which ia a direct poison to living animal matter. lit is possible to extract and isolate this substance as effectually as wo extract morphine from opium, and by injecting it into the veins of an animal, to cause the peculiar forms of disturbance known' as diphtheria or scarlet fever.

Tho same - process takes place if the original habitation of the germ is in a human body. A suitable thriving place havng been found, this point becomes at once not only a breeding place for the germs themselves, but a manufactory which is continually sending out into tho system a greater or smaller supply of deadly poison. The successful manner in which diphtheria has of late years been (treated is duo not so much to the fact that the germ of that disease has been found capable of isolation as that we have, learned the true nature of the disturbance in all disorders of this kind and have been fortunate in coming upon the particular substance that will neutralise the poison which has been secreted.