Experiments on Pasteur's protective inoculation against anthrax in Hungary / by Aladár von Rószahegyi.

  • Rózsahegyi, Aladár von.
Date:
[1882]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments on Pasteur's protective inoculation against anthrax in Hungary / by Aladár von Rószahegyi. 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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    temperature of 42° to 43° C. After the disturbance consequent upon the inoculation had run its course, which it may with certainty he assumed to have done after twelve days, a second inoculation is made with microzymes whose virulence has only been diminished one half, by cultivation at the same tempera- ture for twelve instead of twenty-four days. After twelve days more the fever which succeeds the second inoculation has run its course in all the animals, and they are now completely protected. Before this method could be rendered practically available, two great difficulties were to be overcome —the preparation of inoculative material on a large scale, and its preservation. The material cultivated at 42° to 43° C. retains its vitality at from four to six weeks, and if a single drop be taken from it at any time during this period, put into pure beef-tea, and kept constantly at 35° C., the microzymes quickly multiply, and this second crop possesses exactly the same virulence as the first one possessed at the time when the drop was taken from it. The secondary crop thus obtained from material taken on the twelfth day of cultivation will therefore kill only the half of uninoculated animals, and would not kill any which had already been inoculated with material cultivated for twenty-four days. Converse^, this secondary crop is completely protective against virulent microzymes. bio less important is it that the secondary crops cultivated at 35° C. begin to form resting spores after forty-eight hours, and after several days they are entirely changed into this resting condition. A definite degree of virulence is preserved in these spores, so that the inoculative material in the spore condition can be sealed up in tubes and preserved for any desired time and conveyed to any distance. This is not the case with the cultivated material in the form of threads, because these threads die when air is excluded, and it is impossible to send them about in open tubes on account of the contamination to which the material would be exposed. Whenever and wherever it is desirable, these spores can be cultivated in pure beef-tea, and a small quantity of them yields any required amount of inocu- lative material of the same strength. After the degree of virulence required for protective inocula- tion has been once attained, and to a certain extent fixed in the