PATHOGENIC BACTERIA. 



PART I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Biology, chemistry, medicine, and surgery, in the 

 progress of their evolution, have contributed little by 

 little to the growth of a new branch of learning whose 

 subsequent development has been of inestimable impor- 

 tance to each. Indeed, bacteriology illustrates the old 

 adage, " The child is father of the man," for while it is 

 the offspring of the medicine of the past, it has estab- 

 lished itself as the dictator of the medicine of the 

 present and future, especially in the management of 

 the infectious diseases. 



I. BIOLOGIC CONTRIBUTIONS; THE DOCTRINE OF SPON- 

 TANEOUS GENERATION. 



Among the early Greeks we find that Anaximander 

 (43d Olympiad, 610 b. c.) of Miletus held the theory that 

 animals were formed from moisture. Empedocles of 

 Agrigentum (450 b. c.) attributed to spontaneous genera- 

 tion all the living beings which he found peopling the 

 earth. Aristotle (b. c. 384) is not so general in his view 

 of the subject, but asserts that "sometimes animals are 

 formed in putrefying soil, sometimes in plants, and some- 

 times in the fluids of other animals." 



Three centuries later, in his disquisition upon the 

 Pythagorean philosophy, we find Ovid defending the 



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