THE MICROBE OF PNEUMONIA 161 



then the formation of pus. Bloodpoisoning may 

 quickly follow. The patient is dead. 



This terrible foe is seen in Fig. 78. It is rod- 

 shaped, and multiplies by Fission. 



But whatever form the disease takes, it is prac- 

 tically the same thing. When it attacks simply 

 one lobe of a lung, it is lobar pneumonia. When 

 it involves the whole of one lung, and this only, 

 it is single pneumonia. When it involves both 

 lungs, it is double pneumonia. 



In all kinds of the disease, its symptoms are 

 substantially the same, chills, fever, headache, 

 hacking cough, rapid breathing. In normal 

 breathing one has about seventeen respirations per 

 minute. In pneumonia the patient has from 

 twenty to sixty respirations per minute. 



With the appearance of these symptoms, one 

 may know that he has pneumonia. The germs are 

 already in the lung, doing their deadly work. 

 They subsist on certain substances in that organ, 

 grow, and multiply in great numbers. If septic 

 germs, each one may become in twenty-four hours, 

 16,500,000. By their life processes they generate 

 the fatal poison. This poison enters the circula- 

 tion, produces the disease. 



As the germs multiply with great rapidity, the 

 poison is generated correspondingly fast. This ex- 

 plains why the disease frequently terminates so 

 suddenly. 



In the face of this dreadful foe, continually mak- 



