Report to the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research on the relation of micro-organisms to tuberculosis / by W. Watson Cheyne.

  • Cheyne, William Watson, Sir, 1852-1932.
Date:
[1883]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research on the relation of micro-organisms to tuberculosis / by W. Watson Cheyne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    piece of caoutchouc tubing with a smaller glass tube. The apparatus thus arranged is purified by washing with carbolic acid lotion and afterwards by boiling off some distilled water in it, the end of the small tube being sealed. When the apparatus is cool the end of the small tube is introduced into an artery of some large animal, a horse for example, the sealed end is broken and blood is allowed to flow in till the retort is half full. The end is then sealed, and when the serum has separated a purified pipette is passed through the hole at the top of the retort and a suitable quantity of the serum sucked up and put into smaller vessels. These vessels have necks of ground glass over which a cap fits closely, the upper part of the cap being drawn out in the form of a tube which is plugged with cotton-wool. They are purified by heat. When it is desired to examine the cultivation or to inoculate a fresh flask the following procedure is adopted:— The narrow end of a pipette is sealed, the upper part packed with cotton, and the whole purified by heat. The point is then broken off, the broken part heated in the flame, the cap of the flask rapidly lifted, a small quantity of the fluid sucked up into the pipette, the cap reapplied and another vessel inoculated or the material examined. He examines the organisms in the fluid with a Verick's No. 8 objective without a condenser and without staining them. He has not investigated the tissues with the view of finding the organisms which he describes. He showed me a specimen of the organisms with which he works, and they were undoubtedly micrococci chiefly in groups. He generally cultivates from the blood of the heart of tuber- culous^animals. The skin is stripped off without any special precautions and the chest opened. Then with a heated knife a hole is made in the heart, and the heated end of one of the sealed pipettes introduced through this hole, the end broken off and some blood sucked up and put into the flask containing the cultivating liquid. The inoculated flasks are then placed m an incubator and kept at the temperature of 37° C. In a day or two they become muddy from the development in them of micrococci. He has made about fifty cultivations from tuber- culous animals, and always finds the same micro-orgamsms. ^ He always, in the first instance, uses tuberculous material