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A microscopic vegetable organism, belonging to the class Algæ, usually in the form of a jointed rodlike filament, and found in putrefying organic infusions. Bacteria are destitute of chlorophyll, and are the smallest of microscopic organisms. They are very widely diffused in nature, and multiply with marvelous rapidity…

One of the round variety of bacteria, a vegetable organism, generally less than a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter.

A genus including certain comma-shaped marine bacteria which emit bluish or greenish phosphorescence. Also, any microörganism of this group.

An infectious disease of cattle and sheep. It is ascribed to the presence of a rod-shaped bacterium (Bacillus anthracis), the spores of which constitute the contagious matter. It may be transmitted to man by inoculation. The spleen becomes greatly enlarged and filled with bacteria. Called also splenic fever.…

A fluid vaccine obtained by growing a bacterium (Bacterium anthracis) in beef broth. It is used to immunize animals, esp. cattle.

A variety of bacterium; a microscopic, rod-shaped vegetable organism.

See Bacterium.

the juice of flesh, and is optically inactive. -- Lactic ferment, an organized ferment (Bacterium lacticum or lactis), which produces lactic fermentation, decomposing the sugar of milk into carbonic and lactic acids, the latter, of which renders the milk sour, and precipitates the casein, thus giving rise to the so-…

with destruction of the bones and joints. It is incurable, and is probably contagious.Mycobacterium leprae, curable in most cases by therapy with a combination of antibiotics, but cases resistant to therapy are increasing.

Microbacteria, or bacteria in the form of short rods, including the genus Bacterium. 3. Desmobacteria, or bacteria in straight filaments, of which the genus Bacillus is a type. 4. Spirobacteria, or bacteria in spiral filaments, as the genus Vibrio.

iseases, and supposed to be the cause of the disease; a pathogenic organism; a pathogenic bacterium; -- opposed to zymogene.

f or pertaining to pathogeny; producting disease; as, a pathogenic organism; a pathogenic bacterium.

found in the pus from old sores, supposed to be formed through the agency of a species of bacterium (Bacillus pyocyaneus).C13H10N2O

ever, by articular and muscular pains, and by the presence, during the paroxism of spiral bacterium (Spirochæte) in the blood. It is not usually fatal. Called also famine fever, and recurring fever.

A so-called variety of bacterium, consisting in reality of several bacteria linked together in the form of a chain.

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.

n or ferment. Zymogenic organism (Biol.), a microörganism, such as the yeast plant of the Bacterium lactis, which sets up certain fermentative processes by which definite chemical products are formed; -- distinguished from a pathogenic organism. Cf. Micrococcus.