Report on the pathology and etiology of Asiatic cholera / as observed in Spain in the summer of 1885, by C.S. Roy, J. Graham Brown and C.S. Sherrington, and in Italy in 1886 by C.S. Sherrington.

  • Roy, Charles Smart, 1854-1897.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the pathology and etiology of Asiatic cholera / as observed in Spain in the summer of 1885, by C.S. Roy, J. Graham Brown and C.S. Sherrington, and in Italy in 1886 by C.S. Sherrington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    From, various sources we Lave reason to believe that some of the changes in form described by Dr. Ferran to occur in the comma bacUlus—namely, the small rounded swellings in the course of a spirillum—may present themselves under certain conditions. That the larger peronospora-like bodies are ever developed from the comma bacillus receives no support from any of the facts ivhich have come to our knowledge. We are inclined to think that the small rounded swellings are the result of degenerative changes, analogous to those which occur in certain conditions in anthrax and some other bacilli. We need not say more than that the facts which came to our knowledge, both as to the accumcy of Terran's observations and the value of his method of inoculation^ are entirely opposed to the statements made by Ferran and his supporters. That inoculation made with impure cultures, such as we saw, must expose the recipients to serious risk of septic infec- tion, is self-evident; and we heard of persons suffering from what we beheve to be septicaemia after inoculation by Ferran's method. We had, however, no opportunity of observing such a case. With regard to the straight bacilli found by Emmerich and Ivlein in their investigations into cholera, we may say that Dr. Shakespeare of Philadelphia has informed us that their difSerence in size makes it practically certain that they are different forms of micro-organisms. We have not been able to confirm the ob- servations of Emmerich as to the relation of the straight bacillus found by him with Asiatic cholera. He was unable to detect the bacillus in question in microscopic preparations of the tissues from cholera cases, and could only discover it by placing portions of kidney, &c., or blood taken from cases of cholera, in nutrient cultivating media. We can only say that the cultivations we attempted to make from the blood, and kidney, and liver of cholera cases gave no results. A similar negative result has been obtained by others; and we see therefore no reason for supposing Emmerich's bacillus bears any constant relation to Asiatic cholei-a. It must, we imagine, be looked upon as a septic£Emic form of patho- genic micro-organism accidentally present in the tissues in certain fatal cholera cases. This view, we think, the effects obtained by Emmerich by inoculations on the lower animals do not exclude. A small straight bacillus, found by Klein so frequentlj' present in the contents of the intestine and in the mucosji, we have not been able to identify with certainty in our own preparations.