Report on the nature and import of certain microscopic bodies found in the intestinal discharges of cholera. Presented to the Cholera Committee of the Royal College of Physicians ... by their sub-committee, on the 17th October, 1849 / [By W. Baly and W.W. Gull].

Royal College of Physicians of London. Cholera Committee.

Date:: [1849]

Credit: Report on the nature and import of certain microscopic bodies found in the intestinal discharges of cholera. Presented to the Cholera Committee of the Royal College of Physicians ... by their sub-committee, on the 17th October, 1849 / [By W. Baly and W.W. Gull]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$Letter from Dr. W. Jenner, Assistant- Physician to University College Hospital. Albany Street, \7th October, 1849. My dear Sir,—On reading Messrs. Brittan and Swayne’s papers, it appeared to me that the bodies they described as cholera fungi, bore a very close resemblance to objects I had long since observed in examining microscopically dejections passed by patients labouring under typhoid fever. That they were identical, whether of vege¬ table origin or otherwise, seemed to me the more probable because of a certain resemblance in the chemical constitution of the evacu¬ ations in the two diseases. My colleague, Dr. Parkes, found, when analyzing, at the early part of the year, several dejections passed by patients suffering respect¬ ively from typhoid and typhus fevers, that while the latter were acid and contained no albumen, the former were alkaline and albu¬ minous. Understanding that the microscopic vegetations which flourished in alkaline fluids are not to be found in acids, it struck me that such peculiarity in the nidus, suited for different vegetable growths, might account for Drs. Brittan and Swayne having failed to detect the “ cholera fungi” (if these bodies are vegetable) in the stools passed by patients affected with typhus fever or bilious diar¬ rhoea. Dr. O’Shaughnessy stated, in 1832, that he had tested the stools in 100 cases of bilious diarrhoea, and found them all acid, and without a single chemical character of cholera stools. Simon also says that in bilious diarrhoea they are acid. On examining micro¬ scopically four alkaline stools, passed at different stages of typhoid fever, I found in them bodies which appeared to me identical with those described and figured by the members of the Bristol committee. The bodies I have observed consist of the ring with double out¬ line, and others corresponding to the more developed forms of “ cholera fungi”, figured by Mr. Swayne. I have seen none of the most highly developed forms. Floating through the liquid part of one$