An address, introductory to the session 1884-1885, delivered in the theatre of the Meath Hospital and County of Dublin Infirmary / by Rawdon Macnamara.
- Macnamara, Rawdon
- Date:
- 1884
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An address, introductory to the session 1884-1885, delivered in the theatre of the Meath Hospital and County of Dublin Infirmary / by Rawdon Macnamara. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![gives rise to the disease. He has minutely described its character, mentioning inter alia a remarkable fact, that acids destroy its vitality. An equally eminent scientist, Dr. Klein, however, throws doubt upon the theory that these microbes are, in truth, the maieries morhi of cholera; whilst the members of the com- mission sent out by the French Government to Egpyt, where cholera was raging, reported that in some cases of undoubted and rapidly-fatal cholera, after most, painstaking search, they failed to discover any such microbe as that described by Dr. Koch. But more remarkable still are the statements of Surgeon-Major Timothy Eichards Lewis, Assistant-Professor of Pa- thology in the Army Medical School, who asserts that the microbes described by Dr. Koch as being charac- teristic of cholera, are to be found in the saliva of healthy individuals, and winds up a most masterly memorandum upon the subject in the following words :— Persons who have not been in the habit of examining dried saliva-films will probably be surprised at the number and variety of the organisms which are, more or less, con- stantly to be found in the mouth, and especially at the number of spirilla with which the fluid is generally crowded. The alvine discharges in cholera sometimes swarm with precisely similar spiral organisms, and, indeed, as has long been known, the fluid exuded into the intestines in this disease is peculiarly suitable for the growth of these and allied microbes. But, so far as my own experience—dating from ]869—of the microscopic examination of such a fluid goes, all the microphytes ordinarily found in it are likewise to be found, to a greater or less extent, in the secretions of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22278953_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
