CERTAIN SYMBIOTIC BACTERIAL INFECTIONS PRODUCING GANGRENE: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE PRINCIPLES OF TREATMENT

During the last few years F. L. Meleney1 has written interestingly on symbiotic infections, and this subject is attracting much attention. Symbiosis of bacteria occurs when two or more kinds of bacteria are closely associated and live together harmoniously. Synergism means that there is some result from this association of bacteria not apparent from the bacteria in pure culture. Thus, a synergism would be necessarily symbiotic, but a symbiotic relation is not necessarily a synergism. In bacterial parasitism, bacteria prey on the host to the disadvantage of the host. Parasitism may merge into a symbiotic relation.A. M. Shipley2 says that the whole subject of symbiosis and infection is going to be one of the new fields for surgeons and bacteriologists. He calls attention to the fact that in the World War it was noticed that streptococci when accompanied by anaerobes produced a clinical condition that had rarely