Practical bacteriology, microbiology and serum therapy (medical and veterinary) : a text book for laboratory use / by A. Besson ; translated and adapted from the fifth French edition by H.J. Hutchens.

  • Besson, Albert, 1868-
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Practical bacteriology, microbiology and serum therapy (medical and veterinary) : a text book for laboratory use / by A. Besson ; translated and adapted from the fifth French edition by H.J. Hutchens. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    874/928 (page 842)
    6. Wash lor 1 or 2 minutes in 50 per cent, alcohol, pass rajfidly through absolute alcohol, and xylol. Mount in balsam. Celli, and de Blasi, and others regard the Negri bodies as parasites which at a certain stage in their life history are so small as to be capable of passing through filters, and consider that it is these minute forms which originate the infection. Rem linger holds that the Negri bodies are merely changes in the nerve cells following the infection of the latter by the ultra-microscopic parasite of the disease. SECTION X.—FILTRABLE VIRUSES IN THE PASTEURELLOSES. 1. Distemper.—Carre by filtering the nasal discharge of dogs infected with distemper obtained a liquid which though apparently sterile produced all the symptoms of distemper when inoculated into young dogs. [M‘Gowan has isolated a gram-negative bacillus from the respiratory passages of animals suffering from “ distemper ” and brings forward evidence to show that this organism is the cause of the disease (p. 459)]. 2. Infectious anaemia of horses.—Carre and Vallee, bv filtering through a special bougie rather more porous than Berkefeld V a mixture of one part of serum from a horse suffering from this disease and four parts of normal saline solution, obtained a virulent filtrate. When this filtrate is inoculated into the jugular vein of an horse in doses of 500 c.c. it produces, after an incubation period of 6 days, an anaemia which runs a characteristic course and which can be transmitted from one animal to another. The virus will also pass through a Berkefeld V or Chamberland F or B but the incubation period under these circumstances is of longer duration. 3. Bird diphtheria.—iEtiologically bird diphtheria is a totally different disease from human diphtheria. Guerin thought it was due to a cocco- bacillus belonging to the Pasteurella group which he found in the heart blood of infected birds : this organism on inoculation however gave rise to a fatal septicaemia quite different from the naturally acquired disease. By grinding up in normal saline solution the nictitating membrane of a fowl which had been infected with a thread dipped in an emulsion of a false membrane, Bordet obtained an emulsion which produced in fowls the typical false membranes of bird diphtheria. When this emulsion was sown on blood agar, the only visible growth consisted of a few colonies of adventitious organisms : but by scraping the agar where there was no visible growth with a platinum wire, and transferring the scrapings to a little drop of water and rubbing the mucous membrane of the mouth with the emulsion, false mem- branes were produced in a normal fowl. Serial cultures can also be obtained and occasionally extremely small colonies are visible. Under the micro- scope an emulsion of the cultures shows very large numbers of small granular dots generally collected together in masses. This organism and that of pleuro-pneumonia seem to be the smallest yet cultivated. According to Carnwath, this filtrable virus appears to be identical with that of molluscum contagiosum of birds {vide ante). In an epizootic of diphtheria among birds investigated by him the virus produced indifferently molluscum contagiosum or diphtheria according as to whether the material was inoculated on the bucco-pharyngeal mucous membrane or on the comb. TG. Dean and Marshall have recorded an outbreak of diphtheria in the wood pigeon apparently due to a filtrable virus. By painting a filtered (Berkefeld filter) emulsion of a membrane from an infected bird on to the throat of doves they were able to reproduce the disease experimentally.]