Report of experiments and observations on the vitality of the bacillus of typhoid fever and of sewage microbes in oysters and other shellfish / by E. Klein.

  • Klein, E. (Edward), 1844-1925.
Date:
[1905]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of experiments and observations on the vitality of the bacillus of typhoid fever and of sewage microbes in oysters and other shellfish / by E. Klein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/94 (page 11)
    directed to the stools of typhoid patients as being capable of conveying the disease germs during the first four to six weeks, that is during the active phases of the disease and the early stages of convalescence, the urine not being specially attended to. But since we now know that the patient, weeks after convalescence has set in, voids typhoid bacilli by the urine, the presence in any locality of a convalescent from typhoid fever, in whom the stool has perhaps ceased to be infective, remains, nevertheless, a fruitful source of typhoid bacilli. We may have a seaside place in whose population no typhoid fever cases have occurred, but to which seaside place a person convalescent from typhoid fever has been taken for recuperating; the sewage of this seaside place—ostensibly free from typhoid fever—would nevertheless contain plenty of typhoid bacilli which might find access to shellfish laid down or kept on or near the shore of such a place. The typhoid bacillus belongs to a large group of microbes —coli-typhoid group—which in morphological, cultural and physiological respects possess certain characters in common, but the individual species constituting the group differ, nevertheless, from one another in definite manner. As to the B. typhosus its essential differential character is that it is found, as described above, in definite distribution in typhoid fever and in this disease only, and that its introduction into the alimentary canal under suitable conditions, and its multi¬ plication within the infected person, sets up the specific disease typhoid fever, as has now amply been demonstrated by indirect epidemio-logical evidence, as also unfortunately in several direct instances amongst those who have worked in the laboratory with cultures of the typhoid bacillus. None of the other species belonging to the coli-typhoid group are connected, as cause, with typhoid fever, although some, like the Bacillus Gaertner, some virulent coli-like organisms, the Bacillus paratyphosus and Bacillus dysenteriae, are con¬ nected with other acute intestinal diseases, but not of the nature of true enteric fever. The morphological and cultural characters by which the