178 CLINICAL BACTERIOLOGY AND HEMATOLOGY 



The heart-blood should be collected in the method which has 

 been described previously (see p. 34), and cultures may be made 

 upon the spot, or the pipettes sealed at both ends and taken to the 

 laboratory. 



The spleen may usually be examined in the same way. If it is 

 so firm and hard that no fluid rises into the pipette, it should be 

 treated in the same way as the liver. 



Cultivations should be made from the liver at the time when 

 the autopsy is performed. The organ should be cut in half, and 

 a small portion of the cut surface deeply seared with a hot iron. 

 This area is then to be perforated with a stout platinum needle, 

 and the culture media inoculated at once. 



If the material has to be taken to a distance, and no culture 

 tubes are at hand, a different course must be adopted. The simplest 

 way is to cut out a cube of liver substance from the centre of the 

 organ, and to sear every part of its surface with the flat of a red- 

 hot knife. The block (which may be about as large as a lump of 

 sugar) must be dropped at once into a sterilized bottle. Another 

 plan is to sear the surface of the block, and then to tie a piece of 

 string round it and dip it quickly into melted paraffin (a candle 

 will do), and allow the coating to set ; the dipping is to be 

 repeated several times, and the specimen (string and all) may 

 then be packed without further precautions. In any case it must 

 reach the laboratory as soon as possible. 



Where cultural examinations are not required, small portions 

 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. 181). 



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 diagnosis, 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 



