In memoriam. Physiological and pathological researches : being a reprint of the principal scientific writings of the late T. R. Lewis. / Arranged and edited by Sir William Aitken, G. E. Dobson, and A. E. Brown.

  • Timothy Richards Lewis
Date:
1888
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: In memoriam. Physiological and pathological researches : being a reprint of the principal scientific writings of the late T. R. Lewis. / Arranged and edited by Sir William Aitken, G. E. Dobson, and A. E. Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    PART I.] Experiments Made zvith an Ordinary Healthy Stool. 15 quite vertical. It seemed analogous to the spinning of a plate or ball nicely pivoted on a juggler’s stick, which may be seen to revolve in every direction but the vertical, the analogy being complete, except that the organic connection between the sporangium and the stalk rendered reverse turns necessary. On touching this with water, the capsule appeared to become instantaneously dissolved, no trace being left: the spores had fallen down, and the filament looked perfectly bare. Some parts of the mycelium were dilated into saccules (or macroconidia) (Fig. xix, 6), but no evidence of spore contents was distinguishable. Illustration IV.:— Being desirous of ascertaining whether from the rice-water stools in epidemic cholera I could produce capsules more uumistakably like those figured by Professor Hallier than I had succeeded in doing from discharges obtained in an endemic locality, such as Calcutta is, a sample was brought from Ijucknow, carefully secured in a clean vial, which was obtained during my visit to the North-Western Provinces during the epidemic of cholera which occurred there in September 1869. A drachm of the sediment was poured into a perfectly clean watch-glass, and placed on the stage in the isolating apparatus in the manner described in the last illustration. In the course of a week a film was seen to have formed, which continued to increase in density for another week, but no trace of any mould could be observed in it through the bell-glass. At the end of three weeks the preparation was taken out and micro- scopically examined, but no cysts had formed, as in the former preparation treated in exactly the same way, but there was a great quantity of mycelium, in the meshes of which numerous circular bodies were embedded (Plate VII, Fig. xx); the latter seemed to be the result of segmentation of the former, judging from the similarity between the free cells, and the imperfectly detached segments of mycelium. The watch-glass was replaced in the apparatus for a fortnight, but no change took place. From these illustrations it will be seen that whereas cysts, distinctly resembling those described by Professor Hallier, may, by cultivation, be observed to develop in choleraic discharges, yet they are by no means constantly obtainable, for out of more than a hundred cultivations, made with the express object of developing these cysts, only three times was I able to produce any fungi bearing such tokens of fructification. Is it possible to develop fungi in other than cholera dejections bearing fruit resembling the “ cholera cyst ” ? The answer must be “ Yes,” as the following experiment will show from cultivations of ordinary healthy stool, one isolated and the other exposed. Illustration V.:— About half an ounce of faeces, obtained from a perfectly healthy person, was placed on a small glass plate, and carefully transferred into the bell-glass of the
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