Researches on the bacteriological diagnosis of cholera, carried out by medical officers of the sanitary, maritime and quarantine council of Egypt, under the direction of Marc Armand Ruffer.

  • Ruffer, Marc Armand.
Date:
1907
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Researches on the bacteriological diagnosis of cholera, carried out by medical officers of the sanitary, maritime and quarantine council of Egypt, under the direction of Marc Armand Ruffer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    The fact therefore that vibrio, not only agglutinating but and haemolytic also, is occasionally found in cholera stools, does not necessarily prove that a cholera vibrio haemolyses at times, but it may simply show that several kinds of vibrios, some haemolytic and some non haemolytic, may be isolated from cholera stools. Indeed, in view of the facts recited in this paper, the last conclusion seems to me the only possible one. What has been said regarding haemolysis applies equally to the fixation test. • All the vibrios isolated from the cholera stools which agglutinated with cholera serum gave the fixation test; all the El Tor vibrios, without exception, did not. On the other hand, several vibrios, though neither agglutinated nor converted into granules by cholera serum, reacted to both the fixation and the haemolysis test. I conclude therefore that all these reactions are relatively and not absolutely specific and that any one test, or group of tests is insufficient to establish a true classification. /The only possible classification is to group together all the vibrios reacting in the same way to all tests, separating them from those which, under the same conditions, behave in a different way. If this method be applied to the vibrios found at El Tor, there is no difficulty in distinguishing them from the true cholera vibrios, in spite of several of the reactions of both being similar. And it follows also, that the agglutination, saturation and Pfeiffer's tests, are not, in themselves, of absolute diagnostic value for cholera vibrios. ON VIBRIOS FOUND IN SHIP WATER. During the second quarter of the year 1905, the drinking water of ships calling at Port Said was examined for vibrios by Dr. Zirolia. The samples of water submitted to bacteriological examination were 384 in number and in 82 cases, vibrios were found. Six only of these 82 vibrios gave a positive agglutinating result with high dilutions of cholera serum. (Fluid horse-serum kindly sent by Dr. Gaffky of Berlin. Standard 1 in 3000. Date 23,8/1905). Special attention was therefore paid to these 6 vibrios, as representing in a natural classification, a group most closely related to that of the cholera vibrio.