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A minute grain or germ; a small, round or ovoid body, formed in certain organisms, and by germination giving rise to a new organism; as, the reproductive spores of bacteria, etc.

nic fluid or mixture), as by heat, so as to prevent the development of bacterial or other organisms.

Produced increased vital action in the organism, or in any of its parts.

That which excites or produces a temporary increase of vital action, either in the whole organism or in any of its parts; especially (Physiol.), any substance or agent capable of evoking the activity of a nerve or irritable muscle, or capable of producing an impression upon a sensory organ or more particularly upon its…

f organization; the arrangement of the different tissues or parts of animal and vegetable organisms; as, organic structure, or the structure of animals and plants; cellular structure.

The aggregate of the functions by which a living organism is maintained in a normal condition of weight and growth. Sustentation fund (Eccl.), a fund of a religious body for support of its ministers, chapels, etc.; as, the sustentation fund of the Free Church of Scotland.

ving together in more or less imitative association or even close union of two dissimilar organisms. In a broad sense the term includes parasitism, or antagonistic, or antipathetic, symbiosis, in which the association is disadvantageous or destructive to one of the organisms, but ordinarily it is used of cases where th…

Connected system or order; union of things; a number of things jointed together; organism. [Obs.] They owe no other dependence to the first than what is common to the whole syntax of beings. Glanvill.

, as the radiate, articulate, etc., characteristic of organic nature; as, all unicellular organisms are systemless.

Of or pertaining to the sense, or the organs, of touch; derived from touch. In the lowest organisms we have a kind of tactual sense diffused over the entire body. Tyndall.

anic individuality constituting the purely structural portion of morphology, in which the organism is regarded as composed of organic individuals of different orders, each organ being considered an individual. See Promorphology, and Morphon.

The study or science of the life of marine organisms. Agassiz.

Any change in an organism which alters its general character and mode of life, as in the development of the germ into the embryo, the egg into the animal, the larva into the insect (metamorphosis), etc.; also, the change which the histological units of a tissue are prone to undergo. See Metamorphosis.…

tly found in the lungs, causing consumption. Tubercle bacillus (Med.), a minute vegetable organism (Bacillus tuberculosis) discovered by Koch, a German physician, in the sputum of consumptive patients and in tuberculous tissue, and believed to be the exciting cause of tubercles and tuberculosis.

glands. The virus, or contagion, of this fever is supposed to be a microscopic vegetable organism, or bacterium. Called also enteric fever. See Peyer's glands. -- Typhoid state, a condition common to many diseases, characterized by profound prostration and other symptoms resembling those of typhus.

Having, or consisting of, but a single cell; as, a unicellular organism.

hich takes place primarily around a single central point, as in the lowest of unicellular organisms.

Having but one flagellum; as, uniflagellate organisms.

pecifically (Biol.), not having the different tissues and organs characteristic of living organisms, nor the power of growth and development; as, the unorganized ferments. See the Note under Ferment, n., 1.

d, or set apart, for any particular purpose or function; as, an unspecialized unicellular organism. W. K. Brooks.