A report of microscopical and physiological researches into the nature of the agent or agents producing cholera (second series) / by T.R. Lewis and D.D. Cunningham.

  • Lewis, T. R. (Timothy Richards), 1841-1886.
Date:
1874
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report of microscopical and physiological researches into the nature of the agent or agents producing cholera (second series) / by T.R. Lewis and D.D. Cunningham. 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.

    61/66 (page 55)
    It appears from these results that the dejections of versons suffering from cholera, and also those of peisons in mod health, when injected into the veins, act in some cases Is a poison—have the power of producing a definite, effect m the intestinal mucous membrane, resulting in a disorga- nisation of its substance. The symptoms and pathological changes induced by both e/ i _L O o %) i varieties of material, the choleraic and non-choleraic present o differences : hut, so far as our experience goes, the pro- juportion of cases in which this result is attained when choleraic fluids are employed, is considerably larger than rhen non-choleraic material is used. Comparative virulence of , • l i i i » rjthevafious substances intro- which the material has been made liucedinto tlie peritoneum. , i.i • -i ;• • t h i to reach the circulation indirectly by A closely allied phenomenon has been observed in con- nection with those experiments in -g means of the lymphatics in a serous membrane. We have, I however, already touched on this subject in the paragraph ikJ referring to our experiments on the question of the increase in intensity of the virulent properties of inflammatory products as necessarily dependent on transference from one nimal to another (page 50). ie < w 0 We have found that such an increase is by no means the ordinary result of the transfer—our experience being ased on sixty-eight experiments; for, whereas the in- troduction of solutions of excrementitious matters into the peritoneum on twenty-six occasions was followed by erious inflammation and commonly death in twenty in- tances, or nearly 77 per cent, of the cases, similar ex- eriments in forty-two cases with the fluid product resulting om such primary inflammation was only successful in ten, r 23 per cent. s (fl for1 With two specimens of exudation only were we able to transfer the morbid action more than twice—once in the resent series of experiments and once in the former—but n those two occasions the virulent properties manifested ere unmistakable. In one case the original irritant em- ployed was a decomposing solution of meat, ninety-six ’ ours old, and in the other a solution of ordinary alvine jdischarge.