HOW DO MICRO-ORGANISMS CAUSE DISEASE ? 
487 
Fishes, when they have begun to putrefy, exhibit a long 
list of poisons, some extremely violent, and putrefying albu¬ 
men, cheese, and many other things show similar products. 
It is, therefore, not surprising that we read every now and 
again in the journals of cases of food poisoning, whole com¬ 
munities being sometimes affected. Thus four years ago 
there was a general poisoning of the population in Wilhelm- 
shafen in Germany, which was traced to the use of a certain 
species of mussel which abounded in the harbor of that port. 
It is needless here to recount the symptoms of the poisoning 
that ensued, and which seemed to affect the nervous centres 
and especially the LeuSonium and the motor tract. Multi¬ 
tudes of the patients died, many of them after eating but five 
or six mussels. It was soon found that the injection of a de¬ 
coction of these mussels under the skins of animals killed 
them with the same symptoms. Finally, a poison, found only 
in these mussels at that time and called mytilotoxin , was iso¬ 
lated. 
In this same way all dead animal tissues are used by the 
successive broods and crops of microbes, who split up the 
complex albuminous molecules into simpler and even simpler 
products, until finally, in the comparatively non-complex com¬ 
binations of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, they are in such 
shape that they can be used by both the animal and vegetable 
world, and can again begin their cyclic changes. Of especial 
interest to us is the fact that these ptomaines and toxines are 
extremely similar in chemical re-actions to the vegetable al- 
caloids, a fact of the greatest importance in medical jurispru¬ 
dence. 
Nor are the pathogenic bacteria behind their putrefactive 
brethren in the production of these poisonous chemicals. 
The cocci of suppuration, staphylococcus pyogenes aurens 
and streptococcus pyogenes, cause the well-known blood-pois¬ 
oning, pyaemia and septicasmia, by the products of their life 
action. Ammonia, trimethylami, phlogosin and others not 
yet studied, are known to be formed. 
The typhus bacillus produces the specific typhotoxin, 
which kills by paralysis of the muscles, and is accompanied 
by salivation and gastritis. 
