Paper, 'Preliminary report on the pathology of Cholera Asiatica (as observed in Spain, 1885)' by Charles Smart Roy, J Graham Brown and Charles Scott Sherrington

Description

The authors write: 'The differences of opinion among pathologists as to the relation of certain micro-organisms,—and more especially of a curved bacillus described by Koch—to Cholera Asiatica, led to our being deputed last summer, by the Association for the Promotion of Research in Medicine, acting in conjunction with the Royal Society and University of Cambridge, to proceed to Spain to make further investigations on the subject. In Madrid we were able to make autopsies on twenty-five typical cases of cholera, the post-mortem examinations being made in many of them either immediately after death or within very few hours of it. Our attention was at first directed chiefly to the relation of the comma bacillus of Koch to Cholera Asiatica. Early in our inquiries we were struck by the fact th at Koch’s comma bacillus is not discoverable in the intestinal contents of all cases of cholera. We employed much time and care in the examination of thin dried films of the mucous flakes and fluid contained in the intestine, these films being stained by methods which we knew to be well fitted to show the comma bacillus if that micro-organism were present. Such films from one or two fatal cholera cases showed that the intestinal contents contained enormously larger numbers of comma bacilli than of other parasites. In some of the cases the comma bacillus, though certainly present, was not the most marked feature in the preparation, and in certain of these cases we were only able to find these bacilli after prolonged and careful searching. In many cases of undoubted Cholera Asiatica where death occurred before the reaction stage had set in, we were unable to detect comma bacilli in any of the films or cultures prepared from the intestinal contents taken from different parts of the alimentary canal.'

Annotations in pencil and ink throughout. Includes two figures of the mucous membrane of a small intestine observed during autopsy.

Subject: Pathology / Bacteriology

Received and read 10 June 1886.

A version of this paper was published in volume 41 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society as 'Preliminary report on the pathology of Cholera Asiatica (as observed in Spain, 1885)'.

Reference number

PP/9/1

Earliest possible date

1886

Physical description

Ink and graphite pencil on paper

Page extent

20 pages

Format

Manuscript
Drawing