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.

    32/36 (page 26)
    racterized by their deep yellowish or brownish-red colour, their decidedly spherical shape, and their hard and finely indented out¬ line, within which one or two other concentric and similarly in¬ dented lines may be traced. The surface of some is faintly marked with a polygonal tesselation ; in others, which are usually larger, this is no longer recognizable. Water distends them ; iodine gives them colour ; and ether or alcohol greater definition. These are the spore cases of different species of uredo. In artificially digested white and brown bread of the best quality I first found similar bodies ; and subsequently in different samples of fine flour. (Fig. 15.) Four to six occur in as much flour as will lightly cover a sixpence ; and in a cubic inch of bread consumed at my own table, as many as 150 must exist. Finally, in two separate spe¬ cimens of wheat of this year’s growth, I have found them entangled amongst the fine hairs surrounding the withered style and pistils,— in numbers, from one to eight upon a single grain,—though occa¬ sionally none could be detected. Usually, I have met with the orange-yellow spore cases of Uredo rubigo, or rust; more rarely, and only in bread, with the larger and darker sporidia of Uredo foetida or smut balls, or of Uredo segetum or bunt. Those found in cholera dejections (fig. 14.) appear to be often partly digested, being soft, pale, flattened out, and even emptied of their contents. In one typhoid evacuation they existed in great numbers and were only very slightly altered in appearance. By far the most numerous of the so-called cholera bodies, are the small annular bodies, both oval and circular. Their great abun¬ dance, and variety of size, are well seen in specimens treated with ether, and put up in mastic varnish. d. Some of these, whether oval or circular, which are not rings, but have an annular appearance, owing to their double out¬ line (fig. 10), have, as was pointed out to me by Dr. Baly, all the characters of epithelium-nuclei from the alimentary canal, altered, or simply set free, by the digestion of their containing cells. By artificial digestion I have succeeded in imitating the appear¬ ances of many, but not all, of these bodies, with their bright sur¬ rounding border, and their central substance and nucleoli. e. Another set of the small annular bodies, not so numerous as those last described, consists of true rings, as may be determined by the fact of the inner bounding line being as dark as the outer