Disease
Disease names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Disease diz-ez, a serious disorder of the system
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
diz-ez, a serious disorder of the system. The literal meaning of the term is want of ease, uneasiness, distress. The term is difficult to define. A bruise, a burn, drinking lye, taking poison, the action of certain chemicals, all cause want of ease--pain; but their action, however fatal, is not termed a disease. A cold, a headache, hunger, overeating, overheating, or indigestion may cause distress and even death, but are hardly called diseases. A very large group of infectious diseases may be described not inappropriately as an attack made by minute plant and animal forms on the living cells of the whole or a part of the body. Two scientific discoveries have laid a foundation for the understanding of this class of diseases. First, that the human body, as well as all animals and plants, is made up of cells. Secondly, that exceedingly small plants and animals of many kinds, known variously as molds, bacteria, and protozoa, enter the body, multiply rapidly, attach themselves to the cells, absorb their sustenance, and destroy them. This statement is true not only for man but for the lower animals and for plants as well. These destroying, disease-causing pests are parasites. They feed on living cells and on the corpuscles of the blood. A colony of one particular bacterium or plant feeding on the lungs produces tuberculosis or consumption; another kind spreads over the throat like a mold, causing diphtheria. Typhoid fever, pneumonia, cholera, lockjaw, cancer, influenza, erysipelas, the plague, and glanders are due each to its specific bacterium or parasitic plant growth. Other diseases again are due to attacks of low microscopic, parasitic animals. Malaria and many skin diseases are of this sort. Sometimes the cells of the body are destroyed by the organism direct; sometimes a poison is manufactured which kills the cells. None of these plants or animals can do harm unless they gain entrance to the body. Many of these can do no harm unless they find the body weak or injured. Diphtheria, for instance, finds ready lodgment in a raw "cold throat." Tuberculosis is powerless unless it finds weak lungs. Improper food and impure water are two prolific sources of disease. Preventive medicine consists in keeping the body in health and strength to resist the attacks of germs and in providing pure air, food, and water that the germs may not enter the system. See Food ; Epilepsy ; Lungs ; Blood ; Bacterium ; Diphtheria ; Small Pox ; Typhoid ; Consumption ; Gout ; Glanders ; Cholera ; Lockjaw ; Asthma ; Catarrh ; Medicine ; Phosphorus ; Poison ; Galen; Hahnemann
Disease GERM THEORY OF
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
GERM THEORY OF, the theory that certain enthetic diseases have their origin in vegetable germs that have found their way into the body and there undergo processes of growth which lead to chemical changes. The theory has been held with more or less distinctness for at least three centuries. To animalcules and micro-organisms were attributed diseases such epilepsy, smallpox, the measles, syphilis, and malaria. The researches up to this time were, in 1762, summed up by Plenciz , a doctor of medicine in Vienna, who traced infectious maladies back to microorganisms in the form of animate vegetable and animal forms. Decomposition was shown by him to be the result of the development of living organisms, which, it was suggested , had been transmitted through the air. Before Plenciz had made the results of his researches public, Needham had promulgated his theory of spontaneous generation, following which a line of physicians , as a result of investigation with instruments of ever-increasing accuracy, established the principle rights, position, or privileges as an esthat life could only be engendered by previous life and that the germ theor alone was capable of explaining the general phenomena of certain diseases . These investigations disclosed that all germs were not harmful , and that they infected the air in infinite variety, entering the body through every available channel nel, the mouth, nose , throat, and gastro-intestinal canal. However, the body is provided with a strong defense against its numberless enemies in its covering of skin, the mucous membrane, the lymphatic glands, the phagocytes of certain cells, and the antitoxins in the fluids of Observation of the action of certain germs shows that in diphtheria parts of the blood. DISEASES OF THE EAR. See EAR.
Disease GERM THEORY OF periods: development
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
GERM THEORY OF periods: development, expression, and a series of intervals either tending to improvement, or confirmed conditions of ill-health, according usually as the disease is of the acute or of the chronic form. The form of disease may be neurotic, dynamic, adynamic, constitutional , malignant, hereditary, cutaneous , etc. The usual tendency of disease, from the vis medicatrix naturæ, is toward recovery. as pleurisy, remains only a theory, scientific knowledge of the relation has been established in respect to an ever-enlarging group , including such diseases as erysipelas , gonorrhea, diphtheria, influenza, anthrax , actinomycosis, cholera , typhoid, tuberculosis, infantile spinal paralysis , tetanus, leprosy, malaria, pneumonia , syphilis, and relapsing fever. Culture, cover-glass preparation and animal inoculation are the methods employed in modern bacterial examination, coagulated blood serum, Litmus milk, glucose agar-agar, potato agar-agar, and glucose gelatin are employed as culture media. In the technique employed in cover-glass preparation the pathological material is obtained during life and streaked certain processes of heating to fix it, is placed under the microscope and examined. In animal inoculations the material is inserted or injected under the skin of a mouse or guinea pig, the progress of the malady is watched; and after death autopses of the organs are made. The presence of tuberculosis is ascertained by examination of the sputum by cover-glass preparation , and by parallel methods the bacillus of diphtheria, the plasmodium of malaria, and the germs of other diseases are indicated. over cover-glass, and after
Disease any alteration of the normal vital processes of the
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
any alteration of the normal vital processes of the body under the influence of some unnatural or hurtful condition, called the morbific cause. If accompanied by change of structure, it is ac called organic or structurel; if not, it is said to be functional. The history of disease includes: (1) Symptomatology, or semeiology, the morbid phenomena or symptoms; (2) etiology, or causes of disease, the specific agents or causes generating or producing disease; (3) the special locality or seat of structural disease: (4) the nature and extent of morbid alterations, or lesions, or the stamps, anatomical signs, or evidence of its existence, in connection with its symptoms, causes, and course during life- morbid anatomy; and (5) morbid histology, or the elementary constituents of diseaseproducts. There are usually three
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 list of germ diseases put "typhoid fever, pneumonia, cholera, lockjaw, cancer, influenza, erysipelas, the plague" all down to "its specific bacterium" — and two of those were wrong. Influenza turned out to be caused by a virus, isolated in 1933, and cancer is now understood as uncontrolled division of the body's own cells driven by genetic mutation, though a handful of cancers do follow infection (Helicobacter pylori, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus). Viruses, too small to be seen in the microscopes both accounts describe, became a whole category of their own; smallpox, named in Aiton's cross-references, was declared eradicated in 1980. The bigger shift is that treatment caught up with theory: penicillin's therapeutic power was shown in 1940, and in wealthy countries heart disease and cancer, not infection, are now the leading causes of death.
Written for this edition, 2026.