Micro-organisms and disease : an introduction to the study of specific micro-organisms / by E. Klein.

  • Klein, E. (Edward), 1844-1925.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Micro-organisms and disease : an introduction to the study of specific micro-organisms / by E. Klein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    do follow. This is particularly the case if recent Agar or serum cultures be used instead of gelatine culture, or if in addition to the gelatine cultures diphtheria toxin—from an active broth culture—be injected. In such a case the animal, presumably on account of the toxin present (evidently not present in the gelatine growth), soon sickens, and is found dead in thirty-six to forty-eight hours or later. On examining the peritoneal fluid in such a case it will be seen that very few diphtheria bacilli are demonstrable, either in cover-glass specimens or by culture; in the latter case a drop of the fluid yields only a few colonies. But if we look to the omentum next to the large curvature of the stomach we find masses of lymph, which examined under the micro- scope show aggregations of leucocytes all filled with diph- theria bacilli, some well preserved, others in fragments; between the leucocytes are also large numbers of free bacilli. In these cases then, when the resistance of the peritoneum—so perfect against the bacilli of gelatine cul- ture—has broken down and been overcome, presumably by the additional introduction of toxin, we find numbers of phagocytes, whereas in the other case when the resistance of the peritoneum has successfully been maintained—e.g., in the case of using bacilli of gelatine culture—there is no sign of phagocytes. To the same group of phenomena belongs the occurrence of numerous phagocytes, i.e., leucocytes filled with the microbe, in cases when the injection has produced fatal infection and where there is just the reverse of immunity either of a particular tissue or of the animal as, for instance, in fatal mouse septicaemia, in fatal swine erysipelas, when the presence of leucocytes filled with living bacilli is a con- spicuous feature. Add to this the same condition in the leucocytes of the purulent secretion in Koch's Egyptian 002