The etiology of zymotic enteritis (epidemic diarrhoea) / by Ralph Vincent.

  • Vincent, Ralph Harry, 1870-1922.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The etiology of zymotic enteritis (epidemic diarrhoea) / by Ralph Vincent. 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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    PREFACE In the course of the last ten years the author has been engaged in an investigation of the conditions of disease as found in infants. Seven years ago he had provisionally determined the essential causes of the disease—zymotic enteritis; but he was not prepared to offer any precisely formulated explanation of the relationship existing between the organisms responsible for the disease and the processes by which the disease attacked the infant. He had, how- ever, arrived at the conclusion that it was not an infectious disease, and that, if it were due to a specific organism, then the action of that organism was governed by rules widely divergent from those usually governing the action of specific pathogenic bacteria. Three years later he conceived the explanation which is advanced in these pages. But he was unwilling to publish statements so diametrically opposed to current opinion and practice until he had tested them by check and counter-check. The results of his later and latest investigations may be inferred from the fact that his con- clusions are now published. Desiring to lay these conclusions before the members