Word: thems
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bug Eat Bug. Every place that is favorable for the growth of micro-organisms (and most places are) is a churning battleground of small, fierce creatures. A pinch of moist soil weighing one gram, for instance, may contain more bacteria (up to 2 billion) than there are people on earth...
Man is a part of this incessant struggle: most, if not all, of the little creatures that cause man's diseases have enemies nearer their own size which can kill them off with chemical weapons. The warfare among the bugs* is called "antibiosis," and the chemical weapons of war...
Dubos took samples from patches of soil and noted which micro-organisms were present in them and how many of each kind. Then he made a brew of pneumonia bacteria and poured it on material from the patches. He repeated the experiment many times, watching for changes in the soil...
But the farmer's germs were a special strain. They had licked their weight in penicillin, and come back to knock out streptomycin, chloramphenicol and aureomycin. Unchecked, they were a sure bet to kill the farmer. Dr. Garfield G. Duncan pitted the tough germs in a test tube against...
*It won't: his salary is now $10,000, and he may get a percentage of the gross take. *Microbiologists would prefer that laymen call each organism by its right name, but in the privacy of their own laboratories, they often call them all "bugs." *From the Greek for...