Word: bacterias
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Last summer Dr. Seifriz overwhelmed with gratitude his friends at the Pasteur Institute by taking across the Atlantic a bowlful of Physarum polycephalum. Well might they be pleased with such a thing to study for this mold in many ways is the lowest visible form of life. Bacteria are smaller than the mold cells but their claim to superlative primitiveness is "questionable" and they are harder to study. Amebas are also simple bits of protoplasm, but they have something which Physarum lacks-a contractile vacuole (cavity) which squirts body fluids to the outside...
Late in the 19th Century a Russian named Iwanowski demonstrated the existence of an infectious something smaller than bacteria by passing a solution from diseased tobacco plants through a Chamberland filter. In time it was found that many animal and human diseases were also due to such viruses: rabies, distemper, foot-and-mouth disease, encephalitis, poliomyelitis, measles, yellow fever, certain tumors, common colds. At Princeton Dr. Stanley grew acres of tobacco plants, infected them with the disease known as tobacco mosaic, ground up their wizened leaves, extracted their juices. This liquid was highly infectious to normal plants. But the deadly...
...spread of infection caused by micro-organisms in the air, particularly bacteria and living virus, may be combated by the use of ultra-violet light barriers which destroy the organisms...
...whispering of "indifference" into your ear as an evil characteristic must be as trite as the fame of the cry "Reinhardt." Yes, Harvard has such a bacterium. But, like some bacteria, it is not harmful and rather good. Only the word itself is poor; it gives the wrong connotation. For a Harvard man's indifference is not mere disregard of people, studies, football games--although there are cynics in every society, but a thoughtful desire to let the business of others alone, to let each individual dress and act as he pleases. Communists and New Dealers alike are safe...
Five years ago the Gibsons' Molly Lewis and Sylvia were subject to rude attentions of veterinarians, sent by the State Department of Agriculture to test them for tuberculosis. The test was simple and harmless : the injection of a small quantity of tuberculin, made from the bacteria of tuberculosis, under the animal's skin. If she had the slightest trace of the disease, the cow would develop fever, and be killed as a menace to other cows and to children who drank her milk. Since the Gibsons neither permitted their cows to herd with other cows nor sold their...