The bacteriology of the infective diseases (with bibliography) is fully given in the System of Medicine, edited by Clifford Allbutt, (2nd ed., London, 1907).
Pharmacology is a branch of biology; it is also closely connected with pathology and bacteriology, for certain drugs produce structural as well as functional changes in the tissues, and in germ diseases the peculiar symptoms are caused by foreign substances (toxins) formed by the infective organisms present in the body.
Of this method the rise and wonderful extension of the science of bacteriology also furnished no inconsiderable part.
As to such reforms in our conceptions of disease the advances of bacteriology profoundly contributed, so under the stress of consequent discoveries, almost prodigious in their extent and revolutionary effect, the conceptions of the etiology of disease underwent no less a transformation than the conceptions of disease itself.
A knowledge of the bacteriology of scrofulous affections of bone and joints, such as caries and gelatinous degeneration, has shown that they also are tubercular diseases - that is to say, diseases due to the presence locally of the tubercle bacillus.