212 CLINICAL BACTERIOLOGY AND H^MATOLOGY 



Where cultural examinations are not required, small por- 

 tions of the organs should be placed in a suitable hardening 

 fluid as soon as possible. Equal parts of methylated spirit 

 and water is perhaps as good as anything, and, in the absence 

 of this, undiluted whisky or other spirit answers equally 

 well (see p. 215). 



Other solid organs are treated in the same way. Fluids 

 (pus, the contents of cysts, pericardial or other fluid, etc.) 

 should be collected in pipettes in the manner adopted for the 

 heart-blood. 



SECTION-CUTTING 



The methods employed in section-cutting are somewhat 

 outside the scope of this work, inasmuch as sections are 

 rarely necessary for the purposes of bacteriological diag- 

 nosis, and I have attempted to give the simplest possible 

 methods in all cases. The presence of bacteria in the tissues 

 can usually be demonstrated by the simple processes of 

 smearing the cut surfaces of tissues on clean slides or cover- 

 glasses, and treating the films thus obtained by the fixing 

 and staining methods previously described. If, for instance, 

 we have to search for tubercle bacilli in tuberculous glands, 

 it is usually sufficient to smear the cut surfaces of the glands 

 on a slide, dry, fix by heat, and stain by the same way as 

 sputum is stained for the tubercle bacillus. If anthrax 

 bacilli were being looked for in the liver or other organ 

 removed post mortem, the same method of procedure would 

 be adopted, except that Gram's method of staining would be 

 used. So also for typhoid bacilli in the spleen, where the 

 film would be stained with a simple stain such as thionin or 

 Loffier's methylene blue. 



It seems advisable, however, to give a short general 

 account of the processes involved in section-cutting, for they 

 are by no means difficult, and do not require very elaborate 

 apparatus. Further, the same methods of section-cutting are 

 used for investigating the nature of tumours, etc., and this 

 is done already by many practitioners, and should be done by 

 still more. 



Slices of organs or tissues which are to be cut have first 

 to be fixed. The process of fixation consists essentially in 



