Physiology of Pathogenic 31icrobes. 83 



An infectious disease may be local or general, ac- 

 cording as the germs are confined to the place of in- 

 oculation or have invaded the circulation. In the lat- 

 ter case the general affection may have been pre- 

 ceded by circumscribed local lesions, or it may 

 have been generalized from the first. In either case, 

 a general disease can determine localized lesions, 

 specific or not : nephritis, hepatitis, enteritis, inflam- 

 matory enlargements, etc. These secondary inflam- 

 mations of the secretory organs may be the starting 

 point of grave complications (auto- intoxications) : ab- 

 sorption of bile, urinary intoxication. Changes of 

 these organs present, in addition, direct obstacles 

 to the elimination of the soluble microbic products. 



The multiplication of disease germs arrives, at the 

 end of a certain time, at its apogee ; the disease then 

 reaches its height. The secretion-products of the 

 microbes become harmful to the microbes themselves ; 

 in mingling with the fluids they communicate to 

 them, as well as to the tissues, the faculty of check- 

 ing microbic proliferation, the microbicidal faculty; 

 in a word, they vaccinate the organism. The vac- 

 cinating effect is slowly produced under the influence 

 of the prolonged contact of these products. Im- 

 poverishment of the organic media in principles in- 

 dispensable to the microbes, febrile elevation of tem- 

 perature, can also act prejudicially upon the latter. 

 From this ensemble of unfavorable circumstances 

 there results enfeeblement of the germs, and the 

 phagocytes take upon themselves the task of destroy- 

 ing them. 



The disease then subsides on account of the fact 

 that the toxic substances of microbic origin which 



