The diagnosis and modern treatment of pulmonary consumption : with special reference to the early recognition and the permanent arrest of the disease / by Arthur Latham.

  • Latham, Arthur, 1867-1923.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The diagnosis and modern treatment of pulmonary consumption : with special reference to the early recognition and the permanent arrest of the disease / by Arthur Latham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    the cause of this property, although it is convenient to use the term ' opsonins' for the hypothetical bodies. Each disease due to micro-organisms is said to have a different opsonin—in other words, opsonins are specific. It is not known how these various bodies are produced, whether they are the result of cell metabolism or not. Wright and Douglas have introduced an ingenious method of measuring the quantity of opsonins in the blood of any disease such as tuberculosis. This method is fully described in the Appendix (p. 242). Its object is to ascertain the power of a given serum to increase the ingestion of particular micro-organisms by normal phago- cytes. In the case of tuberculosis, a definite quantity {x) Method of determining of tubercle bacilli is mixed with a definite quantity (y) the opsonic index. of healthy serum and with a definite quantity of healthy leucocytes which have been washed free from all the contents of healthy serum. This mixture is incubated, and after a certain time films are made of its contents and stained. The number of bacilli in at least forty con- secutive polymorphonuclear cells is then counted. This number is regarded as being the normal—e.g., 112, or an average of 2'8 per cell. Simultaneously with the above, the same quantity (x) of tubercle bacilli is mixed with the same quantity (y) of serum from the patient suspected of suffering from tuber- culosis, and with the same quantity (z) of healthy washed leucocytes. This mixture is treated in the same way as the mixture of healthy serum, and the number of bacilli in at least forty consecutive polymorphonuclear cells is counted—e.o'., 56, or an average of 1*4 per cell. The number of these bacilli divided by the number of bacilli