Lecture on the action of the cholera poison on the body, and its nature and history outside the body : delivered at a meeting of the Bengal branch of the Brit. Med. Assn. on the 19th January, 1870 : and the discussion of the subject on the 31st January and 8th February, 1870 / by John Murray.

  • Murray, John, 1809-1898.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lecture on the action of the cholera poison on the body, and its nature and history outside the body : delivered at a meeting of the Bengal branch of the Brit. Med. Assn. on the 19th January, 1870 : and the discussion of the subject on the 31st January and 8th February, 1870 / by John Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ( 3 ) ing contaminated in a very short period. This sudden deve- lopment from the removal of the restraining power, affords an explanation of what long formed a difficulty in my mind,— how so virulent a poison exerts so little influence as it does in one stage. That the gastric juice is absent, in the most virulent form of the disease, is evident from the fact that food eaten one or two days before, is frequently vomited, or found un- digested in the stomach after death. There is another fact in the history of the disease, which would be elucidated by this explanation ; the most frequent hour of attack is in the early morning, about 3 or 4 a. m., when the process of digestion being long completed, the secretion of the gastric juice is, for a time, suspended. It is easy to imagine that if a small num- ber of germs could diminish the secretion, which in its turn restrained their growth, and if the natural multiplication of these germs were allowed for a short period, they would be present in such numbers as completely to prevent the future secretion of the restraining power. The existence of such a specific germ is deduced from the production of all the effects which such a body, and only a living and reproducing body, could cause. That it is visible, or appreciable by the optic nerve, with the assistance of the powerful microscopes of the present day, is the conviction of many ; and Hallier thinks he lias detected it in the shape of a fungus, and Parkes saw a multitude of animalcules in cholera stools. The most search- ing investigation is now being made in Calcutta, by Drs. Cun- ningham and Lewis, on this point. The presence of lively animalculce in thousands, in cholera evacuations, is constant, and might lead to the inference of their being the cholera germ. The course of their existence passes through one stage, in which it has the form described by Hallier. It is intimately associated with the cholera germ, if it be not the real one.— “ Noscitur a sociis.” My doubts of its being so rest on the fact, that a similar animalcule is found in every tank and drain iu Calcutta, and in the evacuations in other diseases, though