The pathology of general paralysis of the insane / by W. Ford Robertson.

Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The pathology of general paralysis of the insane / by W. Ford Robertson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    diphtheroid bacilli in the walls of the inflamed cerebral vessels, using chiefly various modifications of ISTeisser's method. No definite results were obtained until last summer, when examin- ing sections of a portion of the brain subjacent to a purulent area in the pia-arachnoid, from which we had obtained a pure culture of a diphtheroid bacillus. Here we found, in a preparation stained by Neisser's method, a small group of faintly coloured, but still quite definitely recognisable diphtheroid bacilli lying in the walls of an inflamed vessel. The occasional presence of diphtheroid bacilli, generally incapable of taking the stain in the ordinary way, in films of the centrifuge deposit from the cerebro-spinal fluid, in blood films and in sections of the brain, raised the question whether these bacilli were not from time to time gaining access to the blood circulation, and being rapidly destroyed by phagocytic and lysogenic actions. Dr M'Kae and I therefore resolved to study experimentally the action of the phagocytes and blood serum upon diphtheroid bacilli isolated from cases of general paralysis. The flood of light that has been thrown upon the problem of the pathogenesis of general paralysis and of tabes dorsalis by putting this hypothesis to the test, I hope to show- in the next lecture. Lecture II. Delivered on 26tli January 1906. To-day I wish to deal chiefly with the results of an experimental enquiry into the action of the living blood and of the blood- serum upon pure cultures of diphtheroid bacilli isolated from cases of general paralysis. As explained at the end of the pre- vious lecture, Dr M'Rae and I were led to take up this study because we had reason to suspect that certain indistinct granular or rod-like bodies observed in the cerebro-spinal fluid, in the walls of the cerebral vessels, in the blood and in the urine, were really diphtheroid bacilli that had suffered from the effects of a lysogenic or solvent action. We have also, however, had in view the possibility of being able to discover some specific reaction on the part of the blood or blood-serum of the general paralytic towards the diphtheroid bacillus, for, if such a specific reaction were found, it would not only serve to establish our hypothesis regarding the etiology of general paralysis, but it
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