76 Researches Regarding Cholera : The Blood. [part i. 



to them, but it is evident that the blood in cholera is particularly adapted to their 

 development, or at any rate to their being readily recognized and well preserved. 



We have examined the blood in other diseases, and in such exceptional diseases as 

 tetanus, but have failed to discover any such marked deviation from the normal standard 

 in any single instance. Whilst examining some wax-cell preparations of the blood in a 

 case of typhoid fever (the patient having been for two days delirious), we were par- 

 ticularly struck with the marked diminution in the number of white corpuscles, which, 

 in the course of a few hours, are usually seen in the ring of serum surrounding the clot 

 in normal blood ; and also by the constant presence of numerous interlacing vibrio or 

 bacteria-like filaments along the edge of the preparation, stretching across from one 

 cluster of red corpuscles to another. No movements whatever were exhibited by these 

 bodies, which, in the course of a few hours, became slightly beaded, and eventually 

 disappeared. 



So closely did they resemble the low forms of life above referred to, that we were 

 at first much puzzled as to their real nature ; but on subjecting a perfectly fresh sample 

 of the blood to the fumes of osmic acid in the usual way, we found that under these 

 circumstances no trace of the existence of the delicate bodies referred to could be 

 detected. We therefore inferred that their presence in specimens otherwise prepared 

 was due to the separation of fibrine, which had not had time to take place to any great 

 extent before the fluid was fixed by the osmic acid. 



The resemblance which these appearances bore to the description of the motion- 

 less bacteridia of Davaine, as occurring in the blood in " mal de rate" or malignant 

 pustule, was very great ; and we are strongly of opinion that the bacteridia so pro- 

 minently set forth in connection with this malady, are not living organisms at all, but 

 simply coagulated fi brine-filaments. 



Whilst this report was passing through the press, Dr. Bastian's very remarkable 

 work * came into our hands, and we were much impressed by a reference made in it 

 to the experiments of M. Onimus, which show that "neither leucocytes nor any other 

 kind of anatomical elements " are produced in serum whose fibrine has been 

 coagulated. 



This possibly accounts for the remarkable paucity in the number of white blood- 

 corpuscles in typhoid fever when examined as above described, and appears to us to 

 verify to a great extent the opinion which we have formed as to the nature of the 

 bacteroid bodies in the blood in typhoid fever, and of the bacteridia in " mal de rate." 

 Possibly, also, the great number of the bioplasts which appear in the serum of the blood 

 in cholera, may be due to a diminution in the normal coagulability of the blood. -f" 



The " pus-cells " described as occurring in the vessels in pyaemia, may be due to 



* " The Beginnings of Life," 2 volumes : Macmillan and Co., 1872. 



t This conjecture api)ears to receive a certain amount of corroboration from the fact that in two slight cases 

 of cholera the blood was observed to contain such fibrinoid filaments coincidently with an unusually small 

 number of leucocytes. 



