Malignant cholera : its mode of propagation, and its prevention / by William Budd.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Malignant cholera : its mode of propagation, and its prevention / by William Budd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    society, (l.) in the air, in the form of impalpable particles ; (2.) in contact with articles of food ; and (3.) and principally, in the drinking-water of infected places. The existence of peculiar objects in the “ rice-water” discharges of cholera, totally different in nature from any common morbid product cast off by the human body, and having all the characteristics of living organisms, may be ascertained by any one who will take the pains to examine, under the microscope, a series of well-marked specimens of this kind. These organisms abound most in what passes from the bowels, but are also met with in great numbers in the matters vomited; especially in cases in which spontaneous vomiting is a prominent symptom. In the matters vomited, they are, however, according to my observation, not only much fewer, but also, as a general rule, much smaller, than in the fluid which passes downwards. The best specimens of “ rice-water” to select for the study of these beings, are those which are of a dirty white. In these specimens they are generally much more abundant, of a much larger size, and, indeed, in all re- spects in a higher state of maturation, than in the purely white specimens. Single individuals are occasionally met with in samples of this dirty colour, so large as to occupy nearly a sixth of the field of the eighth of an inch object-glass. These larger organisms are filled with a vast number of granules, which appear of a yellowish brown by transmitted light. It is, in fact, to the presence of a large number of such organisms, so coloured, that the dirty colour of these dis- charges is due. Individuals of this large size are, as far as I have seen, only met with, in great abundance, in very malignant