442 



MICROORGANISMS 



saddest, for it usually means broken families and mother- 

 less and fatherless children. Another bad feature of the dis- 

 ease is that it usually means a long lingering illness that is more 

 or less hopeless. 



It is difficult to paint the picture of this disease too darkly 

 and yet it is important that everyone come to know how great 

 a scourge it is. If every citizen could realize how great a 

 danger threatens him from this source we might have a more 

 united effort in our endeavor to do away with the disease or 

 lessen its attack. 



There is hardly any part of the human body that the 

 TUBERCULAR BACILLUS (Fig. 276) may not attack. The lungs 



*m 



flltS-Cv 



FIG. 276. Tuberculosis bacilli. 



constitute the chief seat of infection but the intestines, the 

 various glands of the body, the skin, the throat, the bones and 

 joints and other parts of the body are frequently attacked. 

 The organism generally finds entrance to the body through 

 the mouth or nose and it also leaves the body to become a 

 source of infection to others through the same openings. The 

 sputum of a consumptive contains myriads of the organism and 

 it has been found that in dried sputum, some of these organisms 

 may retain their vitality for as long as eight months. This 

 fact makes it obvious that all sputum from tubercular patients 

 should be completely destroyed or sterilized. The droplets 

 of water that are usually thrown violently into the air when 

 a tubercular patient coughs or sneezes usually contain great 

 numbers of the bacteria and are thus a source of danger to 



