Definition of "bacillus"

'This again,' said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, 'is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera - the cholera germ.'

1895, H. G. Wells, The Stolen Bacillus

"You will conceive a bunch of grapes," said he, "which are covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus.

1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton

The “bacillus of boom or depression,” he wrote, travels freely “from country to country.”

1934 , Gottfried Haberler quoted in Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 71