82 BACTERIA IN THE SPUTA 



Collecting and the Preparation of the Sputa. 



In the preceding work we dealt with the collecting and the 

 treatment of sputa, putting off to another occasion the diagnosis 

 of derivation of the various materials expectorated, in order that 

 the real sputa might be distinguished from the particles of food ; 

 the sputa from the saliva or throat, and the mucus flowing from 

 the nose, being also differentiated. Now is the moment to touch 

 on this point again, in order to describe improved methods of 

 preparation and colouring. 



The materials to be submitted to microscopic observation 

 really do not always proceed from the air-passages. In the case 

 of a boy, 7 years old, affected with Whooping-cough, we remember 

 having received a portion of food ejected from the stomach, and 

 thought to be a sputum. This substance was gelatinous in appear- 

 ance, the colour of tobacco, and contained a large amount of 

 alimentary residue ; but what surprised us was a very dense 

 mycelium of conspicuous sprouts after the type drawn in former 

 plate,'^'Fig.3, d^ interwoven with other slender ones. The fructifica- 

 tion of these mycelia produced forms identical with small heads 

 (capitula) or sporangia, delineated in k and k\ very vigorous, upon 

 as many as five fertile branches, intermixed with similar vigorous 

 forms of Aspergillus glaucus. This would lead us to suppose that 

 the deglutition of the relative germs with the sputa, and their 

 secondary development, is even more easy and vigorous in the 

 stomach. 



In some cases, especially with children, the proper expector- 

 ation is lost or swallowed ; and when the patient is ^asked to 

 spit out again, he emits only a httle saliva, mixed with small flakes 

 of mucus, from the throat and tonsils. These salivary sputa, how- 

 ever, may be recognised generally on the following day through 

 the clarification, after remaining undisturbed, with an upper liquid 

 stratum (more considerable than in crude sputa, or those mixed 

 with abundant saliva), and a scanty deposit, very rich in buccal 

 epithelia, and, eventually, alimentary residue. Besides, they are 

 recognised from being wanting in ellipsoidal epithelia and granules 

 of myelin. 



* See April, 1894. 



