The non-bacillar nature of abrus-poison : with observations on its chemical and physiological properties / by C.J.H. Warden and L.A. Waddell.

Date:
1884
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The non-bacillar nature of abrus-poison : with observations on its chemical and physiological properties / by C.J.H. Warden and L.A. Waddell. 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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    for tho animal's death. A fatal issue as a oonsequenoe of bacterial invasion ocours only when the bacteria, having multi- plied within the circulating blood, interfere to such an extent with the functions of cells, so numerous or essential to life, that life becomes impossible (1). The number of bacteria required to effect this result is enormous—each drop of blood should contain at least many thousands; but in those cases of abrus-poisoning where baoilli were found present in the blood, each field of the microscope never showed above two at any one time, and frequently only one solitary bacillus could be detected after closely scru- tinizing the whole area of the prepared slide. In the cat of Exp. XXII the slide of cardiac blood con- tained one bacillus of the variety already described at page 21 as being most abundant in the wound. The slide of portal blood also contained two of apparently the same kind as above. In cat of Exp. XXIII the portal blood was devoid of baoilli, but the slide of oardiao blood presented six, one of these being much larger and thicker than any of the other five. These latter were slender bacilli, similar to those already described as being present in the wound. With such a large local collection of bacteria in the wound and its neighbourhood, it would only be a matter of time till a few of them found their way into the blood, so that their eventual presence in the blood is not specially remarkable. That they are not specific or pathogenic bacilli is abundantly evident from the following considerations:— 1. —They were not found in the blood in all the fatal cases ; therefore they are not essential to the toxic mani- festations of abrus-seed. 2. —When actually found in the blood they were present in such infinitesimal numbers as to render it impos- sible that they could have been the cause of the animal's death. 3. —The bacilli which were found were of different forms in the different animals, and more than one form co-existed in the blood of same animal. 4. —The interval which elapsed between the time of inject- ting a large dose and the death of the animal was (]) ZlEQLER's Pathological Anatomy, Eng. Trans., Vol. I, p. 288, 1883.
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