Experiments on the escape of bacteria with the secretions / by C.S. Sherrington.

  • Charles Scott Sherrington
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments on the escape of bacteria with the secretions / by C.S. Sherrington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    two cocci intravenously in a bitch and in three guinea-pigs during lacta¬ tion. The milk of these animals had repeatedly been shown before the injection to contain no bacteria at all. After the injection specimens taken at 2J, 3, 4, 24, and 48 hours contained the specific micrococci. Longard(18) has repeated and confirmed these results of Escherich. Wyssokowitsch’s (19) investigation, carried out in Fltigge’s laboratory, contains the most explicit experimental evidence we have. Wyssoko- witsch injected pure cultures of various species of micro-organisms into the blood, and thereafter tested, at successive intervals, the urine, the intestinal contents, and in some cases the milk, for the presence of the organisms injected. Microscopical examination of the fluids and the tissues was laid aside altogether as untrustworthy for the purpose in view, and in detecting the presence of bacteria Koch’s method of plate- culture was almost exclusively employed, with, in every case, a careful post-mortem search by inspection for microscopic lesions in the organs. In taking specimens of the secretion for examination great care was observed to avoid contamination with the blood, etc. Grawitz’s experi¬ ments on the passage of mould-spores (aspergillus and penicillium) into the urine were repeated, but were not confirmed. In twenty-seven experiments, with twelve species of bacteria, chosen as not commonly causing local lesions in the kidney, Wyssokowitsch was unable in a single instance to detect the bacteria in the urine. On the other hand, in thirteen out of seventeen experiments with bacterial species, known to frequently give rise to local lesions in the renal tissue, the bacteria were found in smaller or greater numbers in the urine. In twenty-two experiments, employing fourteen bacterial species, only twice were the species introduced into the blood found in the content of the intestine, and on each of those occasions there were macroscopic haemorrhages in the serosa and mucosa. The milk was only twice examined, and each time found absolutely free from germs. Wyssokowitsch concludes that passage of bacteria into the excreta occurs only when the blood contain¬ ing them escapes through some breach of continuity in the excretory membrane, due to inflammatory or mechanical injury. Since his im¬ portant research appeared numerous, chiefly incidental, observations have been published on the subject. Of these may be mentioned the results recorded by Koujajeff (20), by Neumann (21), and by Kar- linski (22), as to the occurrence of the bacillus of enteric fever in the urine of typhoid patients. These observers detected the presence of the bacilli in 35 cases out of 112 examined in all. In the urine of rabbits in¬ oculated with typhoid bacilli, Trambusti and Maffucci(23) found the bacilli in great numbers, and in the bile as well. The last-mentioned workers found anthrax bacilli in the faeces, in the urine, and in one instance in the bile of guinea-pigs they had inoculated with anthrax. Microscopic examination revealed no necrotic, haemorrhagic, nor inflammatory lesions in the kidneys, liver, or intestine. In rabbits inoculated with B. pyo- cyaneus, Charrin and Buffer (24) have demonstrated the frequent occur-