Report on the influence of glycerine in inhibiting growth of micro-organisms in vaccine lymph / by S. Monckton Copeman and F.R. Blaxall.

  • Copeman, S. Monckton (Sydney Monckton), 1862-
Date:
1898
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the influence of glycerine in inhibiting growth of micro-organisms in vaccine lymph / by S. Monckton Copeman and F.R. Blaxall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    purification of the lymph when the mixture is stored, for some time prior to use, under conditions preventing access of air and light. When, however, a glycerine emulsion is properly prepared after the method I have advocated, it is found that the growth of extraneous aerobic bacteria is at once greatly inhibited, while, after a longer or shorter period, they are practically all killed out. This effect is best demonstrated by making a series of plate cultivations from tubes of glycerinated lymph, at gradually increasing intervals of time, a control plate being poured in each instance from a specimen of the lymph material prior to the admixture of glycerine. These observations of mine, since their publication in 1891, have received ample corroboration from a number of observers in various parts of the world, as follows In 1892, a paper dealing with this question was published by MM. Ohambon and St Yves Menard,'* in which they relate their experience of the use of glycerinated calf lymph when kept for a considerable period in capillary glass tubes (previously sterilised) closed by the blow pipe. Not only were the results they obtained with originally active lymph highly satisfactory, but lymph which, in its fresh state, had given mediocre results, produced after 15 days’ admixture with glycerine a passable vesicle, and, after 40, 50, or 60 days, a typical one. The improvement in the activity of such lymph seemed to them to be due to the gradual extinction of extraneous microbes under the combined influence of glycerine and time. Professor Straus, who made plate cultures with their glycerinated lymph, found that when fresh it gave rise to numerous colonies of various microbes, especially staphylococcus pyogenes aureus and staphylococcus albus ; but that when it had been stored 50 to 60 days, plate cultures therefrom remained absolutely sterile as regards these extraneous microbes. Samples tested at intervals between these two extremes presented fewer and fewer microbes as they became older. These experiments were repeated many times, and invariably with similar results. This evidence, so entirely corroborative of my own work, is the more important as it appears certain, from a perusal of their original paper, that the authors were ignorant that similar results had been previously arrived at, and that these had been published nearly 12 months before the appearance of their article. The value of glycerine in this connexion is also strongly advocated by Leoni in a paper read before the Medical Congress held at Pome in April 1894, and afterwards published in the “ Pevue d’Hygiene.’’I He finds that vaccine lymph as freshly collected is apt to contain large numbers of micro-organisms, some of which are capable of exerting pathogenic properties when inoculated into the system along with the true vaccine virus. And he states that these microbes disappear com¬ pletely from, or that at the least their number is vastly decreased in, vaccine which, having been prepared with glycerine, is preserved for a period of from one to four months before use. His conclusions may perhaps be best given in his own words :—« “ Le vaccin recemment rocueilli est un vaccin containing”; “ Les agents de la contamination s’epuisent dans le vaccin conserve pendant quelque temps dans la glycerine ” ; * “ Gazette des Hopitaux,” December 15th, 1892, p. 1346. f “Revue d’Hygiene,” August 20th, 1894, p. 692. App. C. On the Influence of Glycerine, &c. in Inhibiting the Growth of Micro¬ organisms in Vaccine Lymph ; by Drs. Copeman