Report on the pathology and etiology of Asiatic cholera / as observed in Spain in the summer of 1885, by C.S. Roy, J. Graham Brown and C.S. Sherrington, and in Italy in 1886 by C.S. Sherrington.

  • Roy, Charles Smart, 1854-1897.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the pathology and etiology of Asiatic cholera / as observed in Spain in the summer of 1885, by C.S. Roy, J. Graham Brown and C.S. Sherrington, and in Italy in 1886 by C.S. Sherrington. 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.

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    organisms—certainly mucli less than one comma to a thousand of other forms. It may be added that when we went to Spain we expected to find comma bacilli discovei'able in the intestinal con- tents of all fatal cholera cases, and also that these bacilli would be present in larger number than that of other micro-organisms. This, in-spite of careful and conscientious work, we distinctly did not find. With regard to the other micro-organisms present in the intestinal contents of our cases, we were at first led to think that a small diplococcus was especially frequently present, and indeed throughout all ouv cases this diplococcus was sufficiently often met with to lead us to think that it might have some possible bearing on the etiology of cholera; some of om- films, indeed, prepared from the contents of the intestine, show little besides the diplococci referred to. Our further researches, inoculations, &c., are, however, opposed to the view that there is any more than an accidental connection between this diplococcuS' and cholera asiatica. With regard to the straight bacilli which present themselves in the contents of the intestine in fatal cholera cases, these we found to present numberless varieties in form and dimensions; but it need hardly be said that these it is impossible to identify with, forms already known by the characters under the microscope alone. Our films may therefore contain the straight bacilli described by Strauss, Emmerich, Klein, and other observers. The micrococci met with in films prepared from the intestinal contents of fatal cholera cases show great variety in size and grouping, but, like the bacilli, they cannot safely be identified by these characters alone, as seen under the microscope. These films we found presented structures stained with the dye employed, and which present certain resemblances to a micro- parasite which we have found in the substance of the mucous- membrane of the intestine, as described below. The appearances given, however, are not well marked enough to enable us to satisfy ourselves that the contents of the intestine contain the same parasite as we have found in the mucosa of fatal cholera cases. Our plate cultures from the intestinal contents Avere made in the usual way, by mixing a drop of the contents of the intestine with about an ounce of sterilized f per cent, saline solution, or with sterilized nutrient chicken broth, from which mixture, after