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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    bonate of soda. After the contents of the stomach have thus- been rendered faintly alkaline, Koch introduced into it, through a tube, a solution of a pure cultivation of cholera bacilli; he then injected a small quantity of opium subcutaneously, so as to lessen the peristaltic action of the intestines, his object being to retain the cholera bacillus as long as possible within the intes- tinal canal. Thirty-five guinea-pigs were experimented on in this way, and '•' thirty of them died from cholera. The symp- toms and jpost-mortem appearances of the animals were the same as those in which the»injection had been made directly into the duodenum. The animals treated as above described, on the day after the bacillus had been injected into their stomachs, appeared to be ill,'looking shaggy, they did not eat. On the following day they suffered from paralytic weakness of the posterior extremities; the animal no longer supported itself on its hind legs, but lay quite flat, with its limbs stretched out. The respiration was weak and slow. The head and extremities were cold, the pulsation of the heart hardly perceptible, and the animal died, after it had lain for a few hours in this condition^ Immediately after death an examination was made of the contents of the intestines, and they were found to contain a pure culture of the cholera bacillus. The walls of the abdomen were flaccid, the internal surface of the small intestines markedly infected. The stomach and caecum contained a quantity of fluid. The epithelial pulp found in the intestinal canal was*in many instances crowded with comma bacilli. The urinary bladder w^as empty, the gall bladder full of bile. Dr. Shakespear, from numerous observations, confirms Dr. Koch's facts as above stated; he remarks that guinea-pigs are susceptible to the influence of the cholera bacillus introduced through the stomach—after a period of three days' incubation^ accompanied or not by cyanosis, prostration, algidity, spasmodic muscular contraction, and death. The ])ost-moTtem changes above referred to may always be found. Other observers have confirmed these statements, and it seems almost impossible to decline the truth of the statement that pure cultures of the cholera bacillus are capable of causing in animals symptoms similar to those produced by this micro- organism in the human subject, and that animals dying under these conditions present the same pathological changes as are found in the bodies of human beings after death from Asiatic cholera. With reference to human beings: during the course of instruction on the bacteriology of cholera carried on in the laboratory of the Imperial Board of Health, Berlin, one of the gentlemen attending the course became infected with the bac-