Asiatic cholera : history up to July 15, 1892, causes and treatment / by N.C. Macnamara.

  • Macnamara, Nottidge Charles, 1832-1918.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : history up to July 15, 1892, causes and treatment / by N.C. Macnamara. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    He further ascribes to me the assertion that the comma bacilli are killed by weak acids—a statement which is quite erroneous. I have not, in my former communications, spoken of the death of the conmia bacilli, but, as you will remember, only of the hindrance to their development caused by different substances, and among others, of the absence of growth in gelatine of an acid reaction. In India, Klein states that he found comma bacilli in the same tank in which we found them, but at a time when those wdio lived in the neighbour- hood of the tank were free from cholera. No one knows what Klein found ; his report has in England been subjected to a very thorough and able criticism by Dr. Watson Cheyne. Klein was comjDelled in consequence to withdraw most of his assertions, or almost all which are of importance ; more especially, he had to admit that the cholera bacilli differed from those occurring in phthisis, in dysentery, and in the mouth ; and he hais furthe]^ admitted that he has found true cholera bacilli in all cases of cholera. Thus he finally comes, under compulsion however, exactly to the same result as I did—namely, that the cholera bacteria are a specitic variety, and seen exclusively in cholera. Klein will not be able to escape from all the conclusions which follow from these facts, unless he again involve himself in contradictions. There can be no question that the vibrio of Metschnekoff is nearly related to that of the cholera bacillus of Koch; there is this difference, however, that whereas the cholera bacillus can only be transmitted to animals by artificial means, that of Metschne- koff has the most pernicious influence on almost all annuals, vast quantities of the bacteria being found after death in the blood and tissues. Other forms of vibrio, such as Emmerich's, Deneke's, and Finkler-Prior's, have one after the other been de- scribed as identical with Koch's bacillus of cholera, but they have each and all of them when examined by proper tests been found to differ from it in various ways, their study having clearly demonstrated the fact that the cholera bacillus is a specific micro-organism. It is evident that in its growth the cholera bacillus changes the media in which it grows, liquefying gelatine and producing a definite chemical substance of basic character, which, in all probability, when absorbed into the blood causes the symptoms characteristic of cholera. Substances thus produced from the action of the cholera bacillus are poisonous if inoculated in full doses into various animals, and in pure cultures in very minute quantities it causes peculiar symptoms in man, which I shall subsequently describe; it is asserted that a person so inoculated is, for the time, immune to cholera. Inoculation Ejypcrimcnts.—Dr. Koch has introduced pure cultures of the cholera bacillus directly into the intestinal canal of animals through the stomach, that is, without opening the walls of the abdomen. He first neutralised the acid contents of the stomach by injecting into it a 5 per cent, solution of car-