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TKANSACTIONS 



OF 



THE CKOYDON MICROSCOPICAL AND 

 NATURAL HISTORY CLUB. 



1886-87. 



60. — Disease Germs. 



By Alfked Caepenter, M.D., F.E.M.S., &c. 



(Read 14tli April, 1886.) 



De. Carpenter gave a demonstration of such disease germs as 

 are thoroughly recognised in the medical world, and estabUshed 

 upon a good foundation. He referred to his lecture upon Dry 

 Eot in 1874, and to Dr. Philpot's paper on the same subject in 

 April, 1876, and pointed out the great advance in microscopical 

 research which has been made smce that time. This advance 

 has been wonderfully increased by the discovery of the method 

 of staining living organisms by means of dyes, such as aniline 

 gentian violet and freschine dye. These did not affect other 

 organic matter, the organisms alone being stained by them. He 

 then detailed the plan now adopted of cultivating different 

 classes of disease-germ, and showed how cultivation in sterilised 

 fluids and solids, such as gelatine, had shown the distinctive 

 nature of the germ itself which had been thus cultivated. 

 Tracing the history of infusorial discovery, he brought the 

 subject down to Zopf s classification, and his order of Schizo- 

 mycetes, into four groups, which he adopted, in the first two of 

 which he (Dr. Carpenter) placed most of the estabhshed disease- 

 germs. He showed how some organisms grow best in slightly 

 acid solutions, whilst others can only increase and multiply in 

 alkaline or neutral liquids, and gave credit to one of the genus of 

 Coccacea, viz., to the Ascococciis, as a germ whereby a previously 

 harmless solution may be made to produce a virulent germ, in 

 consequence of the Ascococcus changing an acid solution, such as 

 the acid ammonia tartrate, into an alkaline fluid; and then 

 various cocci which develop enthetic disease may be rapidly 



