The bacteriology of dysentery in Malaya / by Henry Fraser.

  • Fraser, Henry, 1874-
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The bacteriology of dysentery in Malaya / by Henry Fraser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cee and the polysaccharide, dextrin, the changes which must take place before acid can be formed are more complex. Theoretically they must be inverted into aldehydes and ketones which are then oxidised. One strain of an organism may be able to produce these changes more rapidly than another of the same kind, and it is an arbitrary method which classifies the bacilli in accordance with | their action on these substances after intervals ranging from one to fifteen days or longer. Organisms were found which fermented maltose after some days; when retested they were able to do so in twenty-four hours. From the 15th May to the 15th August, 1914, the stools from every case of non-amecebic dysentery admitted to the District Hospital, Kuala Lumpur, were examined; during the last month the amcebic cases were included. Nineteen cases of amecebic dysentery were investigated and from two of them dysentery bacilli were cultivated. One hundred and five non-ameebic cases were investigated; from sixty-one of them dysentery bacilli were not obtained. Four may have been cases of acute diarrhea but fifty-seven of them were clinically cases of dysentery; some may have been amoebic cases, despite the fact that on repeated examinations amcebe were not found. From the remainder, forty-four cases, dysentery bacilli were cultivated. In six cases the Bacillus dysenterve, Shiga, was present. There were obtained from thirty-eight cases mannite-fermenting organisms which possessed the characters necessary for their inclusion among the dysentery bacilli. If the organisms which only fermented mannite are considered as one variety, the number of other varieties is seven, which is the number of possible combinations of maltose, saccharose and dextrin. The organisms which fermented maltose after 24 hours or after some days and did not ferment dextrin may be considered to correspond to the bacillus ‘‘Y” of Hiss and Russell, but in every instance when retested at intervals ranging from a month toa year after isolation