Soured milk and pure cultures of lactic acid bacilli in the treatment of disease / by George Herschell.

  • Herschell, George, 1856-1914.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Soured milk and pure cultures of lactic acid bacilli in the treatment of disease / by George Herschell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    13/48 (page 3)
    (A) Alimentary.—The most important dietetic error which results in intestinal putrefaction will naturally be an excess of animal food. I am personally convinced that one of the chief causes for the prevalence of auto-intoxication at the present day is the large excess of animal food over the real requirements of the body habitually indulged in by the majority of man- kind. This supposition rests also upon an experimental basis, since it has been demonstrated that the number of anaerobes is relatively large, and the colon bacilli (aerobes) small, in animals fed largely upon meat. In these experiments it was found that a large proportion of the abnormal organisms consisted of the bacillus capsulatus. In herbivora the contrary condition of things is present, the dominant organisms being aerobic. The consumption of food which is not perfectly fresh is also a fertile cause of intestinal auto-intoxication. Not only may such food contain toxines already, but they are at the same time, in many cases, in an early stage of putrefaction, and only need the favourable conditions which they will find in the intestines for the process to continue. (B) Gastric.—^There are several conditions under which food may pass from the stomach into the duodenum in a state which predisposes it to putrefactive changes. It may contain an excessive number of bacteria which have been swallowed. This happens in cases of pyorrhoea alveolaris when every mouth- ful of food is necessarily mixed with pus from the diseased gums teeming with micro-organisms. We also meet the same condition in post-nasal catarrh, as during the night when the stomach contains no hydrochloric acid with which to defend itself, the patient continually and automaticaUy swallows a larger or smaUer amount of mucus containmg virulent microbes the most common being the bacillus of Friedlander In other cases the food may pass from the stomach in an imperfectly digested condition. This is invariably the case when the gastric ]uice is deficient m pepsin and hydrochloric acid, as we find it in many cases of chronic gastritis, and achyha gastrica. Aeain whenever there is either a mechanical impediment to the stomach emptymg itself at the proper time, or when from muscular weakness it is unable to do so efficiently, food residues will remam m the stomach even untU putrefactible changes have begun, and m that condition be passed into the duodenum (C) Intesttnal—Any condition which wiU produce retarda- Inal'tract '^^^l 1 ^'^'^^ tinal tract wiU favour the occurrence of putrefaction We ^ s.«s.) motor msufiiciency of the intestine, dilatation of the colon and sigmoid, and in chronic intestinal obstruction We shaU