The microscopic organisms found in the blood of man and animals and their relation to disease. / By Timothy Richards Lewis.

  • Timothy Richards Lewis
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The microscopic organisms found in the blood of man and animals and their relation to disease. / By Timothy Richards Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    and, according to Koch at least, the rod is formed out of a gelatinous-looking envelope surrounding the spore. My observations lead me to believe that the spore does not always at once grow into a rod, but that it divides into four sporules by a process of division, in which the envelope as well as the spore takes part. This division I have seen beginning before the spore escaped from the filament [fig. 9, (b)], and that it is not a degeneration is certain, for I have watched the sporules thus formed lengthen into rods [fig. 9, (c)J. Dr. Koch states that the rods are developed from the gelatinous- looking capsule, and not from the bright, shin- ^ ing spore. Erom what I have seen I think @, there can be no doubt whatever that the «^ capsule takes no active part during the forma- tion of the rod. The sporule thus slightly elongates [fig. 101, and then from one of its „ ^° . \ ' T ' L. o J ■ Bacillus aiithracis: A sporule developing poles an opaque process appears, which, as it into a rod. (After Ewart.) slowly lengthens, pushes the capsule before it, as it would an elastic membrane. The capsule, as this stretching goes on, becomes at last so thin and transparent that it can no longer be distinguished from its contents.' It is, I think, extremely probable that MM. Cohn and Koch may suggest as an explanation of the discrepancy between their description and figures and those given by Dr. Ewart, that the latter has described and figured the spore (or conidium) of a totally different plant, accidentally pre- sent ; and MM. Nageli and de Bary would (in the absence of exact data as to size) in all probability pronounce the germination depicted in the last figure reproduced as being that of a conidium of one or other of our ubiquit- ous moulds. Like Koch, Dr. Ewart found that mice could be fed with splenic-disease BecognitionOf'spores.'Of Bacii. material mixcd with their food wdthout any evil lus anthracis inthe intestine. effects cusuing, and that ' the spores may be found in the alimentary canal of such mice, sometimes as if in process of develop- ment into rods and filaments.' With reference to the last remark, a person constantly engaged in microscopic work may question whether it is possible to distinguish these glistening free ' spores ' from the myriads of other glistening molecules found in the intestinal canal of all animals.