Annual General Meeting of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine (with which is amalgamated the College of State Medecine) : June 27th, 1895.

  • British Institute of Preventive Medicine. Meeting (1895)
Date:
[1895]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual General Meeting of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine (with which is amalgamated the College of State Medecine) : June 27th, 1895. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    contact with the oxygen of the air. To some extent, the formation of the toxine is dependent on oxygen, for far less toxine is formed in a medium artificially freed from air. But, even in a flask exposed to air, the layer of bacilli at first present on the surface gradually falls to the bottom, where, living in a medium free from oxygen, the micro-organisms naturally produce far less toxine. If, therefore, by some mechanical means, the bacilli could be kept on the surface, in all probability the amount of toxine secreted would be greatly increased. In order to obtain this result. Dr. Hunt had the ingenious idea of covering the surface of the culture with a thin layer of powdered cork, or with little rafts made of cork surrounded by muslin. These act as mechanical supports to the bacilli, which grow luxuriantly on the surface, and Dr. Hunt found that a very strong toxine could be obtained in this manner. Another method of demonstrating the affinity which the bacillus diphtheriae has for air, is to cultivate it with a micro-organism either facultatively aerobic or strictly “ anaerobic.” Thus it had been found that the streptococcus pyogenes grows more vigorously when sown in a flask containing the bacillus diphtheria;; but a more striking example has been demonstrated by Dr, Hunt. It is well known that the spores of the tetanus bacillus, when sown in a flask freely exposed to air, will either not grow at all or so feebly that their multiplication is hardly noticeable. On the other hand, this microbe grows luxuriantly in a medium from which the oxygen has been driven off by some inert gas, e.^., hydrogen, or which has been partially or totally deprived of oxygen by the addition of chemical substances. Instead of using chemical substances. Dr. Hunt deprived the medium of oxygen by growing the bacillus diphtheria; in it for a few days. The bacillus diphtheriae frees the medium so thoroughly from air, that the bacillus of tetanus, when inoculated into the same flask, grows most luxuriantly ; so that the paradoxical result is obtained of aerobic and a strictly anaerobic bacilli growing luxuriantly in one and the same cultivatino- medium. It is hardly necessary to add that such cultures were not used for the inoculation of horses. The toxines used for inoculations were prepared from cultures sterilised by the addition of 50'^“' of 5 per cent, carbolic acid solution to i litre of culture, and then filtered through Chamberland’s filter. The addition of carbolic acid increases the toxicity of the culture, probably by setting free the poisons present in the dead or living bodies of the bacilli. The greatest care is exercised by Mr. Robertson in examining the horses previously to buying them, but being very forcibly struck' with the dang-er of brino-incr fresh horses into our stables, we erected three loose boxes away from the main stables, and here every horse when bought goes through a week’s quarantine. During that time the temperature is taken twice a day,.and the horse is tested with mallein and tuberculin ; and so thoroughly has this preliminary examination been carried out that not a single case of contagious disease has occurred. It speaks well for Mr. Robertson’s management of the stables that, during last winter’s epidemic, not a single horse suffered from influenza. Every horse is groomed in the morning, and is inspected at least twice a day by the veterinary surgeon, and the first horses we bought in August, 1894, are now in perfect health, and in far better condition than when they were bought, although each of them has yielded large quantities of blood.