Contributions to the experimental pathology of spirillum fever / by H. Vandyke Carter ; (communicated by James Andrew).

  • Carter, H. V. (Henry Vandyke), 1831-1897.
Date:
1880
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the experimental pathology of spirillum fever / by H. Vandyke Carter ; (communicated by James Andrew). 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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    ture unusually high ; and Experiment 20, and those made with saliva, show that other organic poisons operate dif- ferently to the spirillar. Here the varying state of the blood at different stages of the “ fever,” and probably idiosyncrasy of subject, are elements of calculation as yet not enough known. There could hardly be a more intense degree of blood-infection than was displayed in my expe- riments, and all the deaths occurred during1 secondary fever; perhaps some elucidation of the character of this last-named sequela might be elicited by the fractional method. Seventeenth experiment.—W. B., in Experiment 1 (vide chart), had twenty-six hours previously to furnishing the infecting material used below, been injected with spirillar blood from a human subject, which was proved (in its comrade, Gr. P.) to be capable of conveying disease. In this material no sign of the parasite was detected; plasma rather clouded, fibrillation visible, white cells few, little protoplasm, specks few and quiescent, red discs piled and heaped. 2. E., a healthy animal with normal blood, had a few minims of the above defibrinated blood injected in the usual manner at noon, March 25th; it remained well till the 29th, the temperature being tolerably uniform in its daily oscillations, though rather higher than usual at maximum (103 ). The blood was examined twice daily (excepting on the 28th), and at 10 a.m. of the 29th, or ninety-two hours after injection, it was found to contain a few active spirilla without being otherwise peculiar. Next^day there occurred a smart febrile paroxysm (temp. 100-2°) of about eight hours' duration, and soon after its acme the blood was found to be free from the parasite, only some moving granules being detected ; the tempera- ture then declined to 101°. There seemed no reason to doubt that this brief attack was due to artificial infection, and hence the inference that the germs of specific pyrexia are not necessarily represented by the blood parasite. Relapse. E. continued well for six days, or about 150