THE AMERICAN 



MONTHLY 



MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 



Vol. XIV. JUNE, 1893. ' No. 6. 



On the Microscope in Medicine. — I. 



By EPHRAIM CUTTER, M. D , LL.D. 



NEW YORK. 



Spirii.ina Splendens or S. Asthma. 



[with frontispiece.] 



This is a beautiful alga, parasitic on man, and found in the spu- 

 tum of asthma, hay fever, or of those predisposed to these diseases- 

 In 1877, or thereabouts, I saw it for the first time in the sputum of 

 a very nervous invalid lady, who earnestly solicited a careful ex- 

 amination, in order to settle the exciting cause of her faucial neu- 

 rosis. I did not know what the vegetation was till Dr. Salisbury 

 showed it to me in asthmatic sputum. He said he discovered it 

 in 1856, or thereabouts, and called it Spirilina splendens. He 

 has since changed name to 6". asthma. It was called Spirilina 

 because it was often coiled and curved like a spiral spring, and 

 splendens because it is so lustrously luminous and appears, 

 especially under an inch objective and one-inch eyepiece, like a 

 highly burnished gold wire. It is not found in all cases of asthma, 

 because it may escape observation. 



I remember an asthmatic of forty years' standing whose sputum 

 I studied twice a week for a year before I found the S. asthma. 

 I found it in a case of fibrous consumption without asthma., 

 though there was plenty of granular and encysted gravel in the spu- 

 tum, as in the sputum morphologies of asthma. I have found the 

 6". asthma in my own case, though I never had asthma, but have 

 had bronchitis and expectorated lung calculi on two distinctly re- 

 membered occasions. Still, when one considers that asthmatic 

 paroxysms are produced by some exciting causes, acting on a sys- 

 tem previously prepared by predisposing causes, to wit, the gravel 

 of the lungs following improper feeding, it is possible for an asth- 



DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATE. 



a, b, c, =: massive gravel : d, e, = granular gravel. The acicular and double-pointed crys- 

 tals are very common. 



s, = Spirilina asthma. For much better and more beautiful cuts see The Relation of Ali- 

 mentation and Disease. J. H. Salisbury, LL.D., New York, J. H. Vail & Co., 1888, plates xvi 

 and xvii, which were ready for the press in 1868. Some call 5//>?7/«rt «j^^A>«a Curschmann's 

 spirals, and the above crystals Charcot Leyden's ; but unless it is shown that these gentlemen 

 made their discoveries before 1862 the priority must be given to America for this beautiful and 

 useful work of the microscope, 



