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ties that may infect; communicable or caused by infection; pestilential; epidemic; as, an infectious fever; infectious clothing; infectious air; infectious vices. Where the infectious pestilence. Shak.

Any disease caused by the entrance, growth, and multiplication of bacteria or protozoans in the body; a germ disease. It may not be contagious.

In an infectious manner. Shak.

The quality of being infectious.

Capable of reinfecting.

A chronic infectious disease of cattle and man due to the presence of Actinomyces bovis. It causes local suppurating tumors, esp. about the jaw. Called also lumpy jaw or big jaw. -- Ac`ti*no*my*cot"ic (#), a.

A preservative against contagious and infectious diseases, and the effects of poison in general. Brande & C.

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.…

species are active agents in fermentation, while others appear to be the cause of certain infectious diseases. See Bacillus.

To free from infectious or contagious matter; to destroy putrefaction; to purify; to make innocuous. When the infectious matter and the infectious matter and the odoriferous matter are one . . . then to deodorize is to disinfect. Ure.

ding to disseminate, or to become disseminated. The effect of heresy is, like the plague, infectious and disseminative. Jer. Taylor.

Disorder of body; slight illness; distemper. A huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes to life. Shak.

The theory which likens the course of certain diseases (esp. infectious diseases) to the process of fermentation, and attributes them to the organized ferments in the body. It does not differ materially from the accepted germ theory (which see).

g, the quarantine flag of all nations; also carried at a vessel's fore, to denote that an infectious disease is on board.

substance supposed to be capable of absorbing, retaining, and transporting contagious or infectious germs; as, woolen clothes are said to be active fomites.

(Med.) The theory which attributes contagious and infectious diseases, suppurative lesions, etc., to the agency of germs. The science of bacteriology was developed after this theory had been established.

germs, particularly bacteria, or bacterial germs, which are considered the cause of many infectious diseases. -- n.

To affect with infectious disease; to communicate infection to; as, infected with the plague. Them that were left alive being infected with this disease. Sir T. North.

causes the communicated disease; any effluvium, miasm, or pestilential matter by which an infectious disease is caused. And that which was still worse, they that did thus break out spread the infection further by their wandering about with the distemper upon them. De Foe.

Infectious. Beau. & Fl. True love . . . hath an infective power. Sir P. Sidney.