When the disease-producing bacteria gain access to the tissues and blood of human and other animals by means of wounds, or through an inflamed pulmonary or alimentary mucous membrane, they produce pathological effects, provided there is not sufficient resistance and health power in the animal’s tissues to antagonize successfully the deleterious influence of the invading parasitic fungus.  It is the rapid multiplication of the germs which furnishes a continuous irritation that enables them to have such a disastrous effect upon the tissues of the animal.  If the tissues had only the original dose of microbes to deal with, the warfare between health and disease would be less uncertain in outcome.  Victory would usually be on the side of the tissues and health.  The immediate cause of the pathogenic influence is probably the chemical excretions which are given out by these microscopic organisms.  All plants and animals require a certain number of substances to be taken into their organisms for preservation of their vital activities.  After these substances have been utilized there occurs a sort of excretion of other chemical products.  It is probably the excretions of many millions of micro-organisms, circulating in the blood, which give rise to the disease characteristic of the fungus with which the animal has been infected.  The condition called sapraemia, or septic intoxication, for example, is undoubtedly due to the entrance of the excretory products of putrefaction bacteria into the circulation.  This can be proved by injecting into an animal a small portion of these products obtained from cultures of germs of putrefaction.  Characteristic symptoms will at once be exhibited.

Septicaemia is a similar condition due to the presence of the putrefactive organisms themselves, and hence of their products, or ptomaines, also in the blood.  The rapidity of their multiplication in this albuminous soil and the great amount of excretion from these numerous fungi make the condition more serious than sapraemia.  Clinically, the two conditions occur together.

The rapidity with which symptoms may arise after inoculation of small wounds with a very few germs will be apparent, when it is stated that one parasitic plant of this kind may, by its rapidity of multiplication, give rise to fifteen or sixteen million individuals within twenty-four hours.  The enormous increase which takes place within three or four days is almost incalculable.  It has been estimated that a certain bacillus, only about one thousandth of an inch in length, could, under favorable conditions, develop a brood of progeny in less than four days which would make a mass of fungi sufficient to fill all the oceans of the world, if they each had a depth of one mile.

Bacteria are present everywhere.  They exist in the water, earth, air, and within our respiratory and digestive tracts.  Our skin is covered with millions of them, as is every article about us.  They can circulate in the lymph and blood and reach every tissue and part of our organisms by passing through the walls of the capillaries.  Fortunately, they require certain conditions of temperature, moisture, air, and organic food for existence and for the preservation of their vital activities.