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.

    65/94 (page 61)
    EXPERIMENT IX. This experiment was undertaken to test the behaviour of oysters towards the B. coli communis of ordinary domestic sewage. One dozen “ small Dutch oysters ” were obtained from a first-class shop in the City—the oysters had just arrived direct from Holland. The oysters were carefully brushed under the tap and placed in a clean tank in 2000 c.c. of sterile sea water. Twenty-four hours after, two were taken out for analysis by Drigalski plates—two plates for each oyster. The result was that neither of them contained in and l part of the body of the fish any B. coli communis— that is to say, in none of the four plates were any red colonies with red halo to be found. The test by Drigalski plates, as I have already explained, is undoubtedly the best that we have, and for this reason : that only B. coli communis produces on these plates already after 24 hours at 37° C. round distinctly red colonies, several millimetres in breadth with red halo; and if no such colonies, viz., largish red with red halo, make their appear¬ ance in 48 hours, according to my experience—extending now over a considerable number of analyses—the conclusion is justified, and is confirmed by other culture tests, that no B. coli communis is present in the material analysed. I must insist on this, for the reason that all other methods used for preliminary diagnosis are decidedly inferior, because colonies of the above kind invariably respond to all tests of B. coli communis, whereas the colonies of other microbic species, unlike the above red colonies with red halo, on the complete series of tests being made do not answer to the true B. coli communis. Although in several of the tests they may simulate the B. coli, if the tests are completed, they can be proved to be not the true B. coli communis, but to be different from this, the typical and constant microbe of ex- cremental matters. I have for years past—now more than 12 years—insisted on a distinction being drawn between the typical B. coli communis of excremental matters and what, owing to one or the other similar character, may be