Ptomaïns, leucomaïns, toxins and antitoxins, or, The chemical factors in the causation of disease / by Victor C. Vaughan and Frederick G. Novy.

  • Vaughan, Victor C. (Victor Clarence), 1851-1929
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ptomaïns, leucomaïns, toxins and antitoxins, or, The chemical factors in the causation of disease / by Victor C. Vaughan and Frederick G. Novy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the injection of five c.c. of the beef-tea cultures of different ages failed to affect white rats, kittens, or rabbits. However, this micrococcus when grown for twenty days in a sterilized egg, after Hueppe’s method of anaerobic culture, produced a most potent poison. The white of the egg became thin, watery, markedly alkaline, and ten drops sufficed to kill white rats. Miura and Takesaki find that the ripe ovaries of tetrodon rubripes contain a substance which induces in rabbits acceler- ation of the respiratory movements, paralysis of the skeletal muscles, mydriasis, increased peristalsis of the intestines, and arrest of the heart. The disease known as “ kakke,” which prevails from May to October in Tokio, is, according to Miura and others, an intoxication due to the eating of fish, which belongs to the 8combrid<e. The affection is generally chronic or subacute, seldom acute. The most characteristic symptom is paralysis of the diaphragm with consequent dyspmca and disturbance of the action of the heart. Electrical stimulation of the dia- phragm hits proven to be the most successful treatment. Griffiths found in sardines that had undergone putre- factive changes a base to which he has given the name sar- dinin. This ptomain, together with others reported by Grif- fiths, is described in Chapter XII. Pot a in saw a man suffering from vomiting, vertigo, ringing in the ears, and pain in the joints due to eating lobster. There was pain in the bowels, but no stool. Sieber has recently examined into the cause of a fish epi- demic in Russia. In an aquarium, from which fish were taken to supply a castle table, as many as thirty dead fish were found in the course of two days. From the dead and sick fish and from the aquarium water Sieber obtained by anaerobic meth- ods a highly toxicogenic germ to which she has given the name bacillus piscicidus agilis. This bacillus consists of highly mo- tile short rods. Old cultures, especially those in bouillon, have spores, l he bacilli are easily colored with /field's solution. On gelatin and agar plates the colonies are granular, gray or