The microscopic organisms found in the blood of man and animals, and their relation to disease / by Timothy Richards Lewis.

  • Lewis, T. R. (Timothy Richards), 1841-1886.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The microscopic organisms found in the blood of man and animals, and their relation to disease / by Timothy Richards Lewis. 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.

    33/104 (page 27)
    tliat it exceeded the prescribed length, was, on account of the importance attached to it by the Academy, published in extenso} The paper deals in the tii-st place with M. Bert’s experiments, and explains the discrepancies betwctm M. Bert and M. Davaine’s M. Bert and MM. Jaillord and Lapiat’s reauits. rcsults ill conncctioii witli charboH-blood, as already described. But it goes further than this. It will be recollected that the toxic, material submitted to experiments by M. Bert did not give rise to bacilli in the blood, although its virulent properties were most marked, and the possibility of inoculating the disease from animal to animal without bacilli was quite as manifest as in charbon-tluid crowded with them. Similar results have been published by many observers ; for instance, MM. Jaillard and Laplat did so very soon after Dr. Davaiiie’s pajier was read in 1863, and formulated their conclu- sions in this wise : (1) charbon is not a parasitic disease; (2) the presence of bacteridia is to be considered as an epi-phenomenon, and not as a cause; and (3} that the fewer bacteridia the blood in sang de rate contains, the more viru- lent it is. It thus became common to hear of cases of charbon with, and cases without, bacteridia. Davaine has also shewn that the virulent properties of the virus of septi- caemia manifest a marked increase when tmnsferred inoculations of septmous exuda- from aiiimal to animal. It had been found tliat tions. after twenty-five such successive inoculations, a millionth, and even a billionth or trillionth, part of the original poison was sufficient to produce death. Babbits were found to be very susceptible; guinea- pigs somewhat less so. Bats were found to be capable of resisting a considerable quantity. It was also observed by Davaine that decomposing blood lost its virulent properties when exposed to the air in a few days; out of 27 animals inoculated with 1 to T^th of a drop of blood, which had stood from I to 10 days, 12 died, whereas out of 26 animals inoculated with like material which liad stood from 11 to 60 days only 1 perished.^ M. Pasteur, bearing in mind the difference between bacilli of charbon and th, •rtbrioM- Of ‘tenacity of life, determined septicasmia. ascertain whether a similar condition did not * Compiet Rendut, t. Ixxxv, p. 101, 16th July 1877- Inoculation de la mnti^re aeptique:’ Bulletin de VAcademic de Science, November 1873, January 1873; cited by Birch-Hirschfeld, loc. cit., page 173.