GERM THEORY OF DISEASE, the theory that certain diseases are com municated from an infected person to an uninfected one by living organisms which gain access to the body of the afflicted person by the air or food, or drink, and which, growing and multiplying in the body they invade, produce the changes characteristic of the particular disease. The period during which the living parti cles of contagious matter retain their vi tality, like the rate of their growth and multiplication, varies in different cases, but it is limited in all. Few, if any, re sist the destructive influence of a tem perature of 300° F., while most succumb at the temperature of 200° or even less, particularly if exposed for some time. Animal poisons generally are destroyed by boiling, and clothes, sheets, etc., in fected, may be rendered pure by being exposed to a temperature of 300° F. These living organisms are grouped to gether as microbes or micro-organisms, and are divided into different classes. The micrococcus is a round form about the 32,000th of an inch in size, and mul tiplies by fission. The bacterium is rod shaped, about the 10,000th of an inch long, with rounded ends; it also multi plies by fission. The bacillus is a third form also rod-shaped, and somewhat larger than the bacterium. They often form long chains or threads, and increase by division and by spore formation. Vi brio and spirillum are somewhat similar forms; and, like the others, increase with a rapidity beyond conception. The con nection between these micro-organisms and the various forms of zymotic disease has been thoroughly established.
The only method of investigation that yields reliable results is to separate the organisms supposed to be the cause of the disease, and cultivate it outside of the body. Thus a drop of blood from a person suffering from a special disease, which contains the bacteria, or bacilli, etc., believed to be the producers of the disease, is placed in a flask containing a nourishing material, care having been taken to destroy all other organisms in the flask. The special microbe flourishes there, let us suppose. It is then culti vated in one flask after another through successive generations, only a single minute drop of the material in one flask being used to inoculate a succeeding one. In this way a pure cultivation is obtained, a cultivation, that is, contain ing the particular microbe and none other. If this is the true cause of the disease, then a drop of the solution con taining it introduced into the body of an animal capable of the disease ought to produco it, and the particular organism introduced should be found multiplying in the blood and tissues of the infected animal. Such a demonstration has been
given of the cause of a few diseases. Dr. Koch, of Berlin, published in 1876 a paper giving a full account of the life history of the bacillus organism which had been observed in animals dead of splenic fever; and in 1877 the great French chemist, Pasteur, proceeded to investigate the subject, and his investi gations conclusively support the germ theory of disease. In 1882, Dr. Koch, of Berlin, announced the discovery of a micro-organism in tuberculosis, a disease believed to be the chief, if not the only, cause of consumption of the lungs. These microbes are found not only in the lungs of persons who have died of tubercle, but also in the spit of tubercular and con sumptive patients, and multiply also by spores. After the epidemic of cholera in Egypt in 1883, which spread to France and Italy, investigations were under taken by French, German, and British commissioners.
All investigation, however, seems to point to the fact that every infectious or contagious disease is due to some form of micro-organism, and that there is one particular organism for each particular disease. Each organism produces its own disease and none other; and the special disease cannot arise unless its germ has gained entrance to the body. The channels through which these germs obtain entrance are innumerable, but they have one origin and one only, and that is a preceding case of disease. The "germ theory" affords the hope and sug gestion of a method of diminishing, if not of getting rid of, such diseases alto gether, and to some extent also indicates the direction in which their cure is to be sought.
GkRoME, LiON(zha-roml, a French painter; born in Vesoul, France, May 11, 1824; and in 1841 entered the studio of Paul Delaroche at Paris, at the same time attending the School of Fine Arts. In 1863 he was appointed Professor of Painting in the School of the Fine Arts. His first great picture, "The Age of Augustus and the Birth of Christ," was exhibited in 1855• and four years later his "Roman Gladiators in the Amphi theater" gained him great reputation, that was still further enhanced by "Phryne Before Her Judges" (1861). In the same year he exhibited, "Socrates Searching for Alcibiades at the House of Aspasia," "The Two Augurs," and a portrait of "Rachel." "Louis XIV. and Moliere," "The Prisoner," "Cleopatra and Caesar," "The Death of Caesar," "The Plague at Marseilles," "Death of St. Jerome," "Lioness Meeting a Jaguar," and "The Gray Heights" (1874), are among the best known of his subsequent works. He died at Paris, Jan. 10, 1904.