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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    Fig. 19.—Beaded or rosary-chain appearance assumed by the spirilla found in the blood of a fever patient at Bombay (sketched as seen by Hartnack's immersion objective No. 9, ocular 4). they may present a well-marked beaded or rosary-cliam appearance (fig. 19). This feature I was able to observe on one occasion only. The spirilla of the ordinary character were plentiful in this person's blood on the evening previous to the day on which this observation was made but when examined on the following morning there were only linked or rosary-chain spi- rilla in his blood. They were not very numerous and their movements were not of that rushing character ordinarily observed, but conveyed the impression of tumbling across the field. The inference which such an observation appears to warrant is, that when the blood acquires a certain as yet undetermined condition it becomes unadapted to the existence of spirilla, and that the fibrils thereupon undergo segmenta- tion, after the manner of other scliizomycetes [compare with figure 11, Plate I], and the separated plastides become diffused throughout the circulation; possibly they then gradually disappear in the same manner as we have seen other plastides (minute bacteria, &c.) disappear very rapidly after being injected into the circulation. This appears to me to be more probable than that they continue in the circulation until the blood re-acquires the state suitable to their growth into fibrils, seeing that the time for their return is so uncertain—it may be two days, may be six days or a fortnight even, and perhaps they may not return at all. Be that as it may, it is clearly evident that their existence as spirilla is dependent on the composition of the fluids of the body. Heydenreich suggests that their disappearance is due to the elevated tem- perature of the blood at the height of a paroxysm^ If that were the case, they ought to become more numerous with the fall of temperature after death, but it is well known that they disappear exceedingly rapidly when life becomes extinct, in this respect oflFering a marked contrast to other members of the cleft- fungi group—bacteria and bacilli. The fact of their total disappearance immediately after death, or probably ^ . .„ . even before death actuallv takes place, is very The disappearance of spirilla im- ^ ' « a:d^'!nWeluLll significant as shewing the extremely close relation changes occur in the blood itself, i-i • i -i i ji in ii i • t • which exists between them and the blood m living