Bacteria and You!
You’re sick? But why!!
It’s happened to all of us. You wake up with a fever and a sore throat. You stumble out into the world and make your way to the doctor’s office. After sitting for slightly more time than you had scheduled in the waiting area, surrounded by a gaggle of fellow sniffling and coughing humans, you’re called back to the small room to be examined and prodded.
A nurse in a hazmat suit starts by jamming a stick up your nose and vanishes.
Several moments later the doctor finally enters.
“Good news!” They say while pulling their pen light from a breast pocket and grabbing a tongue depressor from the counter. “It’s not Covid! Now let’s see what’s going in your throat.”
You don’t see what your doctor sees, but it looks like this:
It’s a bacterial infection. A common one, a simple course of antibiotics will fix you up in short order.
But why? Why do you need antibiotics? And where did the damn infection from in the first place?
In the last article, we already discussed the ancient theory of Miasma vs Germ theory and how Germ theory won out! So if we know there are germs, what are they?
Some of the germs, at least a lot of the ones causing us problems are bacteria.
They were first described in 1673 by Antonie va Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology. Oddly enough, he was experimenting with microscopes to see the threads closer to the draperies he manufactured. He became renowned for his microscopes and managed to document bacteria from the human mouth, and spermatozoa.
(He didn’t know what he was looking at and thought it might be a parasite!)
The connection, however between these tiny microscopic beings and disease took a long time. 200 hundred years would pass before John Snow would put data behind the Germ theory.
A few years later, Louis Pasteur would prove that micro-organism was responsible for spoiling beverages and successfully produced the first method of pasteurization. He used this knowledge to do another experiment to disprove Spontaneous generation and add credibility to Germ Theory.
So what is bacteria?
Bacteria are super tiny single-cell organisms that are everywhere The majority of them are between 0.5–5.0 micrometers in size. That’s so small you can’t see them without microscopes. They come in various shapes and have various modes of movement.
The important factor to remember is these things are alive. They move and reproduce. They’re constantly looking out for food and resources.
They’re also extremely simple. Responding only to the most minute of chemical responses.
But they do evolve! They were one of the very first organisms on the planet and they outnumber us!
Some of them have specifically evolved to attack and spread among humans.
This brings us back to that tonsilitis.
Most infections of this kind (when caused by bacteria and not viruses) are caused by Streptococcus pyogens. A common bacteria that causes lots of different infections. For the most part, it hangs out on your skin and is easily passed from one person to another. It ends up in your mouth and in your throat by poor hand hygiene.
But how can these bacteria hang out all the time on your skin and not cause a problem? Well, that’s because your body has world-class defense systems. It corrals, destroys, and repairs all these bacteria that would like nothing more than absorb all of your precious nutrients.
So why did you get sick? Because the bacteria has evolved, and it knows your defenses. Given the smallest of chances, it’ll evade your defenses, set up shop, and start ruining your tissues.
And that leads us to the most important discovery in medicine.
Antibiotics!
This is the second entry of a series of articles about infections. My apologies for the Wikipedia links, but the original articles are from the 1800s and Wiki has the best synopsis. Next will be about antibiotics and how wonderful and terrifying they are!
