A brief review of our knowledge of the relation of micro-organisms to diseases in man / by William Robert Smith.

  • Smith, William Robert, 1850-1932.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A brief review of our knowledge of the relation of micro-organisms to diseases in man / by William Robert Smith. 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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    first consisting of those cases which occur in connection with larger or smaller local affections, but always of great size, such as a suppurating knee-joint, a large, suppurating, contused wound of the soft parts, a suppurating compound fracture, and the like. In these cases the general symptoms are maintained by local deposits, which continuously supply the body with morbid materials, giving rise to the condition described by Ogston as micrococcus poisoning. The second group consists of cases in which nothing worthy of the name of a local centre exists. The infective material enters through a small puncture or scratch, the general pysemic affection following a single, often transitory, infection. Rosenbach believes the streptococcus pyogenes to be the cause of pytemia. There is an affection resembling erysipelas which is apt to attack butchers, leather-dressers, etc. From a small wound, generally on the finger, a reddish infiltration extends, spread- ing with a sharp margin, and coming to an end in one or two weeks, over the metacarpus. There is no fever asso- ciated with it. A micrococcus was obtained from the part in the same manner as Fehleisen obtained his micrococcus, which grows on agar-agar as beautiful delicate colonies. Inoculations made with them cause a little brown circle, with itching and burning, which slightly increases in size, and then fades away. With a view of accurately determining the etiology of such acute purulent inflammations as osteomyelitis, whitlow, etc., Garre made a series of inoculations upon himself, into a small wound reaching as deep as the corium made on the outer border of the root of the nail of the left little finger; he placed, by means of a platinum needle, a small quantity of a pure cultivation of staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, obtained from the blood of a patient suffering from acute osteomyelitis ; a slight inflammatory redness appeared for a few hours and then disappeared. He then inoculated three small wounds in a corresponding part on the ring finger of the left hand, with the result that pain, inflammation, and suppuration supervened, and from the pus cultivations of the staphylococcus aureus were obtained. He further rubbed over the skin of the left forearm some of the same cultivation ; pain, heat, redness, and swelling followed, with numerous pustules, and in four days an enormous carbuncle appeared, which reached its height on the sixth or seventh day; on the eighth day, pus pressed out of the depth of the wound was inoculated on agar-agar and gelatine, and the resulting cultivation showed microscopically and macroscopically the