A microscopical examination of certain waters submitted to Jabez Hogg / and a chemical analysis by Dugald Campbell ; with introductory notes by Samuel Collett Homersham.

  • Jabez Hogg
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A microscopical examination of certain waters submitted to Jabez Hogg / and a chemical analysis by Dugald Campbell ; with introductory notes by Samuel Collett Homersham. 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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    most perfectly constructed filter beds. Even filtering through carbon, or magnetic oxide or carbide of iron, in no way affects or kills these living eggs and organisms, or deprives the water of them, although it may make the water clearer and brighter, and may “ force the sulphureted and phosphureted hydrogen, sometimes found in foul water, into combination with oxygen.” The microscope readily detects the minuter forms of organic life in water so filtered ; in skilled hands it also enables the medical man to distinguish from each other healthy and diseased cells, the bacteria and microzymes of septic poison, the specific poison cells of ophthalmia, of small-pox, of sheep-pox, of vaccine, and such like minutely organised granular bodies, varying in diameter or size, from the one five thousandth to the one fifty thousandth of an inch. One of the latest contributions of the microscope to medicine and to our knowledge of entozoa (parasitic internal worms) is, that a ncmatoid worm will find its way into the blood of a man and multiply there in thousands. These thousands of living, active, propagat- ing worms are, it is believed, conveyed into the blood- vessels in the fluids taken, doubtless, by the water drunk. The Delhi or Damascus sore, a disease that has spread all over the East, has by the microscope been discovered to be produced by a minute vegetable cell, very like the yeast plant, that grows marvellously fast, and very soon destroys large portions of the skin, and ultimately kills the patient. The fungus foot disease of India is also due to an algae or fungus; and this produces a great amount of disease among the native population, frequently the loss of a foot or a hand of those afflicted. The fungus alluded to is supposed to be conveyed into the circu- lation by drinking contaminated water. A fresh water unicellular algae (sarcina ventriculi) is often found in the human stomach, and is productive of a distressing form of disease. This has also been traced to drinking impure water.
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