The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900 — John Shaqi
The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, June, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The most susceptible animals for the cholera microbe are Guinea pigs.
There are two principal methods of ingrafting upon them the virus:
Koch’s method of administering it through the mouth and leaving it to
develop in the intestines of the animal, and Pfeiffer’s of injecting
it, not into the intestines, but into the abdominal or peritoneal
cavity, where the intestines are lodged, by introducing there the virus
with a hypodermic needle not allowed to penetrate into the intestines
themselves. But by neither of these methods could the microbe be
cultivated in an unbroken series of animals, as it became gradually
weakened and soon lost its power of affecting such animals. For the
purpose in question, cultivation in the peritoneal cavity had the
advantage that in a healthy individual the peritoneum is free from
other microbes, whereas in the intestines there are always present a
large number of micro-organisms which interfere in variable ways with
the growth of the particular microbes.
But when one inoculates the peritoneal cavity of a Guinea pig with a
dose of cholera microbes sufficient to cause a fatal disease, it is
found, when the animal dies, that the microbes have died also. Thus,
the attempt to ingraft the virus from a first animal to a subsequent
one is checked at the very beginning. This initial difficulty was
overcome by merely giving to the first animal a dose larger than was
necessary to cause a fatal effect. The animal then succumbs more
rapidly, and the microbes have no time to disappear. At the post-mortem
examination there is found, in the peritoneal cavity, a small amount of
exudate liquid which contains large numbers of those microbes alive.
When, however, that exudate is injected into the peritoneal cavity of a
second animal that animal does not succumb to the infection, or even if
it succumbs one finds that the microbes have again disappeared in this
second animal. By starting with, a still larger initial dose one may
have three, perhaps four, successive animals affected by the virus, but
it invariably ends by being weakened, and finally dies out.
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