MICROBES AND THEIR WAYS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 16, 26 February 1918, Page 4

MICROBES AND THEIR WAYS.

There are as many kinds of microbes as there are kinds of animals. There arc lions and elephants and guineapigs and jellyfish, and, in the microscopic world, there are the specific organisms known as the bacilli of tuberculosis, of boils and carbuncles, and of typhoid fever, etc. The word “bacterium ’ ’ means a 11 rod, ’ ’ and the word “•bacillus’’ means “a little rod.’’ These microbes or germs look like short rods; the bacillus of consumption is just like a sausage in shape—no legs or arms, nor eyes and ears—just like a sausage. This sausage can grow by lengthening out, and then dividing into two, as though someone had tied a string round its middle and pulled it tight. Then those two grow long and divide again, and so on indefinitely. Or take another example, the bacillus of lockjaw. It does not matter where you cut yourself or how deep you go'; if there are no bacilli in the wound you will not get lockjaw; if there are you will. A clean cut between the thumb and first finger will not give you lockjaw, but a cut on the top of your head or the solo of your foot containing dirt ■with the special bacillus in it will certainly give you lockjaw. We can spot this bacillus because it is shaped like a drum-stick; it has a bob at one end, and we know that it likes to grow in mould, especially in the neighbourhood of a farmyard or stables where horses arc kept. This teaches us that a cut into which dirt from the floor of a stable has got should be most carefully cleansed.