396 TIMOTHY KICHARDS LEWIS. 



opened into the mouth of a fever-free patient. Billroth also states 

 that similar spirilla were found in connection with caries of bone. 



Heydenreich, who probably has investigated this matter as 

 carefully as any observer, and written the fullest account of it 

 which has come under my notice, notwithstanding his manifest 

 desire to claim for the spirillum a causative relation to the 

 disease, is, nevertheless, compelled to own that sufficient reason 

 has not been shown to warrant its being described as specifically 

 different from the spirillum of water and the ordinary spirillum 

 of the mouth.^ 



In May, 1877, I had an opportunity of observing cases of 

 fever in Bombay in which Dr. Vandyke Carter had demonstrated 

 the existence of spirillar organisms in the blood. Dr. Carter 

 has recently published an interesting account of his observa- 

 tions.2 These, as far as the abstract of the paper submitted to 

 the Pathological Society shows, coincide closely with like obser- 

 vations in Europe. During my stay in Bombay I had an 

 opportunity of examining twenty-five cases of the disease, and 

 observed the spirillum in five of these on several occasions. It 

 could not, however, be said that the other subjective symptoms 

 in these cases were more grave than in other cases of the fever, 

 in which not a trace of the spirilla could be found. 



One of the preparations of blood, containing these organisms, 

 which I was able to preserve, is a particularly good one, and as 

 it was obtained by exposing the fluid immediately on its removal 

 to the fumes of a weak solution of osmic acid, it may be con- 

 sidered as representing the spirilla exactly as they appeared in a 

 perfectly fresh slide. The fumes of this acid, as has been stated 

 by several observers, are particularly useful in preserving the 

 natural appearance of these microphytes, as, indeed, of blood 

 preparations generally. Professor Eay Lankester, when recom- 

 mending its use to English observers, wrote : " It is sufficient 

 to expose a thin film of blood on a glass cover to the vapour 

 arising from a bottle containing a two per cent, solution of osmic 

 acid, during three minutes, to ensure its complete preservation. 

 Every corpuscle thus becomes ' set/ as it were, in its living 

 form ; there is no coagulation, no shrinking, no dissolution ; but 

 as the corpuscle was at the moment of exposure to the vapour so 

 it remains. The white corpuscles even exhibit their pseudopo- 

 dial processes arrested in the act of movement. It is as though 

 the osmic-acid bottle contained a Gorgon's head, which freezes 

 the corpuscles, as they face it, into stone.''^^ 



I have prepared several micro-photographs of this slide in the 



1 Op. cit. p. 31. 



2 'TheLaucet,' June, 1S78. 



3 ' Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xi, p. 370, 1871. 



