Word: bacterias
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Difficult Choice. Tetanus bacteria lurk in sewage and soil, in dust and rust. They can enter the human body through any penetrating wound, through the unhealed navel of the newborn, and through drug addicts' contaminated dope. There is so little that even the best of medical centers can do once the disease has developed, Dr. Christensen insists prevention is the only reliable cure. Tetanus toxoid is cheap and safe; it rarely causes unwanted reactions. It should first be given in a course of three shots paced a month apart, he says. There should be a booster a year later...
...concept of public health. He is not a psychiatrist, nevertheless he made his department unique in the nation by paying as much attention to mental as to microbial ills. "In our society today," he said, "stress, frustration and anxiety are the triggering mechanisms for more diseases than all the bacteria in the microbiology books...
...until he was unobserved did a researcher pull out of his briefcase a letter-sized sheet of sterile, moistened collecting paper and press it against a towel. Then he folded the paper and slipped it back into his briefcase. Back at the laboratory, the sheets were checked for bacteria. Though the public hand towel has long been recognized as insanitary, it is still widely used in Germany, and Dr. Walter Kikuth and Dr. Ludwig Grün wanted to study just how dangerous roller towels were. They wound up appalled...
...saturated with germs that no count could be made. Another 63 averaged 16,527 germs per square centimeter, but even worse than the germs' quantity was their quality. Half the towels were loaded with staphylococci, which cause boils and wound infections. A third of the towels bore colon bacteria, which spread dysentery, typhus and typhoid...
...rocketing growth has split it into countless specialties. At one extreme are the geneticists who deal with the chemistry of heredity and seldom see a whole living organism. Classical geneticists work in peculiar zoos, surrounded by cages of mice, jars of insects, cultures of yeasts or bacteria. Population geneticists study groups of wild creatures to see whether changes of environment affect hereditary traits. Practical geneticists use the latest tricks of science to breed new plant and animal strains. Geneticists who study humans are the most frustrated; they can seldom slice up their subjects or mate them experimentally...