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]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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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    dejection were numerous minute jointed threads. I may mention that the former bodies were found to exist most abundantly in the pale yellowish particles floating through the typhoid stools, some of which appeared almost entirely composed of them. I am, my dear sir, Yours faithfully, Dr. Baly. W. Jenner. Letter from John Marshall, Esq., Assistant-Surgeon to University College Hospital. Mornington Crescent Place, 23rd October, 1849. Gentlemen,—I beg to submit to your consideration the following results of an examination of the minute bodies which have been re¬ cently pointed out as existing in the evacuations of cholera patients. 1. In the dejections or in the contents of the intestines of cholera patients after death, I have, in the majority of instances, recognized all the forms of microscopic bodies described as being found therein, and represented by Messrs. Brittan and Swayne, and by Dr. W. Budd. These I have examined under high magnifying powers (using a one-eighth or a one-twelfth of an inch object glass), and have submitted them to various reagents. In order to obtain objects for comparison with these bodies, I have digested, with pepsin prepared from the sheep’s stomach, the common articles of vegetable diet. Not one of the reagents which I have employed appears to have acted uniformly upon all the cholera bodies. Neither alcohol nor ether, when applied to the moist mucus in which they lie, pro¬ duce much effect upon any of them ; but when the mucus is spread out upon glass, and allowed to dry spontaneously, either of these agents, especially when pure, almost entirely dissolves the substance of a certain number of them. a. The bodies thus acted on by ether, vary in size from the smallest up to those which are rather under the medium dimen¬ sions, and are plainly distinguishable from the particles of solid, and globules of liquid fat present with them. They have a bright, transparent, yellowish hue, resemble flattened discs in form, are cupped, or irregularly depressed in the centre, and have a more or