Surgery, past present and future ; and Excessive mortality after surgical operations : two addresses to the British Medical Association 1864 & 1877 / by T. Spencer Wells.

  • Thomas Spencer Wells
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgery, past present and future ; and Excessive mortality after surgical operations : two addresses to the British Medical Association 1864 & 1877 / by T. Spencer Wells. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    ON BACTERIDES 46 which they differed only in the absence of movements. In sub- sequent observation, however, he found a great number of these corpuscles of far greater length than that assigned to bacteria or even vibriones. He now believes that they cannot be properly classed with any of the known species ; he considers them to be a well-defined species, resembling the filiform protozoa by their mode of generation and propagation, the filamentous con- ferv£e in form, appearance, and dimensions, and certain fer- ments by the phenomena which they induce. M. Davaine proposes to term them provisionally merely bacterides. There are considerable varieties in the size of the bacterides obser- vable, without any condition of the inoculated animals ex- plaining the fact. Their number also greatly varies, from myriads found in some instances, to their rare occurrence in others. A very peculiar condition in animals affected with car- buncular disease is the disposition which exists for the globules of blood to become agglutinated to each other, so as to present little islets in the serum. When the blood infected with bacte- rides begins to putrefy, these agglutinated globules separate again. The blood of the capillaries is far richer in bacterides than is that of the large vessels ; but they have not been found to have passed from the mother to the foetus, although existing in prodigious numbers in the placenta. When putrefaction has commenced, and the bacterides can be no longer recognised, the blood ceases to possess the power of inoculating the carbun- cular disease, although if used in sufficient quantity it may still cause the death of the animal, with other accompanying pheno- mena. The carbuncular disease, or splenic apoplexy, as ob- served in sheep, and which first led to the discovery of the bacterides in the blood, can only be transmitted by inoculation when the blood is fresh. The power which the blood possesses to communicate the disease continues for a longer or shorter time after death, according to the temperature, this faculty disappearing during the heat of summer in less than two days. Dried blood may retain the power of propagation provided it be rapidly dessicated prior to putrefaction ; and it is highly probable that dried bacterides transmit the disease in flocks of sheep through the medium of the respiratory organs. The disease may, too, be transmitted by the agency of the digestive organs, though less certainly than by subcutaneous inoculation.
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