On a chronic cholera carrier / by J.G. Adami, A. Vallee and G.E. Martineau.

  • Adami, J. George (John George), 1862-1926.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On a chronic cholera carrier / by J.G. Adami, A. Vallee and G.E. Martineau. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    spirillum, had also led to a more active proliferation of other forms of organisms that are not specific. An interesting phenomenon was observed in connexion with one of these forms; namely, D2, and to a slighter extent, D14, a phen- omenon usually ascribed to the existence of pro-agglutinoids; namely, whereas there was no agglutination in the dilutions of two hundred and fifty and five hundred, higher dilutions afforded definite precipitation. Independently Dr. Vallee, studying samples of the stools sent periodically from Grosse Isle, obtained parallel results. The eight- hour cultures on Dunham’s broth afforded vibrio forms, but the plates made from Dunham’s broth in the main yielded gas-producing organisms of the colon type. We can only conclude that, with an attenu- ated organism, the vibrios, while multiplying with fair rapidity on Dunham’s medium, have, to a large extent, grown faintly at first upon transplantation to other media. Similarly, up to the end of April, eight successive examinations afforded smears giving vibrio forms. The ninth failed to show vibrios in smears made directly from the diluted stools, although cultures on Dunham’s medium, like all the previous cultures, afforded forms which by the microscopic method of examina- tion showed agglutination with dilutions of from two to three thousand. The tenth and the eleventh examinations, made in May, gave negative results with Dieudonne’s medium (see later), although, even in this last examination, growth was obtainable on the surface of Dunham’s medium. Dr. Vallee confirms Dr. Adami in obtaining, as a result of Dunham’s concentration method, a dominant growth in subsequent cultures of bacillary forms, motile, Gram-negative, and which do not liquefy gelatin. Why these forms agglutinate in so high a dilution is an interesting problem. A few years ago Drs. Adami and Chopin isolated from a suspected water an organism of the colon type, which wasfurtherstudied by Dr. Klotz, and which agglutinated with similar high dilutions of typhoid serum. They suggested then that the existence of this aberrant reaction might be regarded as possibly indicating that the organisms had been derived from human discharges, that, in short, this phenomenon of agglutination with human blood serum to this very high degree indicated at least that the microbes had been accus- tomed to grow within the human organism. Possibly a similar sugges- tion can be made in this case. Indeed, we may even go a step further, and suggest that the high agglutinating capacity of these cultures has some relationship to their symbiotic growth in the human body along with the true cholera spirillum; that with this growth they have become, as it were, sensitized.