Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/842

Rh gelatine becomes sticky, and then undergoes slow liquefaction, the growth sinking and leaving the upper layers comparatively clear. This organism is not an obligate parasite, but a facultative; it may grow outside the body and remain alive for long periods.

Lockjaw is most common amongst agricultural labourers, gardeners, soldiers on campaign, in those who go about with bare feet, or who, like young children, are liable to get their knees or hands accidentally wounded by rough contact with the ground. Anything which devitaUzes the tissues — such as cold, bruising, malnutrition, the action of other organisms and their products — may all be predisposing factors, in so far as they place the tissue at a disadvantage and allow of the multiplication and development of the specific bacillus of tetanus. In order to produce the disease, it is not sufficient merely to inoculate tetanus bacQli, especially where resistant animals are concerned: they must be injected along with some of their toxins or with other organisms, the presence of which seems to increase the power of, or assist, the tetanus organism, by diverting the activity of the cells and so allowing the bacUlus to develop. The poison formed by this organism resembles the enzymes and diphtheria poison, in that it is destroyed at a temperature of 65° C. in about five minutes, and even at the temperature of the body soon loses its strength, although, when kept on ice and protected from the action of light, it retains its specific properties for months. Though slowly formed, it is tremendously potent, jsuJfisu part of a drop (the five-millionth part of a c.c.) of the broth in which an active culture has been allowed to grow for three weeks or a month being sufficient to kill a mouse in twenty-four hours, ^h of a drop killing a rabbit, T>'.T a dog, or -^ of a drop a fowl or a pigeon; it is from 100 to 400 times as active as strychnine, and 400 times as poisonous as atropine. It has been observed that, quite apart from size, animals exhibit different degrees of susceptibility. Frogs kept at their ordinary temperature are exceedingly insusceptible, but when they are kept warm it is possible to tetanize them, though only after a somewhat prolonged incubation period, such as is met with in very chronic cases of tetanus in the human subject. In experimentally-produced tetanus the spasms usually commence and are most pronounced in the muscles near the site of inoculation. It was at one time supposed that this was because the poison acted directly upon the nerve terminations, or possibly upon the muscles; but as it is now known that it acts directly on the cells of the central nervous system, it may, as in the case of rabies, find its way along the lymphatic channels of the nerves to those points of the central nervous system with which these nerves are directly connected, spasms occurring in the course of the muscular distribution of the nerves that receive their impulses from the cells of that area. As the amount of toxin introduced may be contained in a very small quantity of fluid and still be very dilute, the local reaction of the connective-tissue cells may be exceedingly slight; consequently a very small wound may allow of the introduction of a strong poisonous dose. Many of the cases of so-called idiopathic tetanus are only idiopathic because the wound is trifling in character, and, unless suppuration has taken place, has healed rapidly after the poison has been introduced. In tetanus, as in diphtheria, the organisms producing the poison, Lf found in the body at all, are developed only at the seat of inoculation; they do not make their way into the surrounding tissues. In this we have an explanation of the fact that all the earlier experiments with the blood from tetanus patients gave absolutely negative results. It is sometimes stated that the production of tetanus toxin in a wound soon ceases, owing to the arrest of the development of the bacillus, even in cases that ultimately succumb to the disease. Roux and Vaillard, however, maintain that no case of tetanus can be treated with any prospect of success unless the focus into which the bacilli have been introduced is freely removed. The anti tetanus serum was the first anti toxic serum produced. It is found, however, that though the antitetanic serum is capable of acting as a prophylactic, and of preventing the appearance of tetanic symptoms in animals that are afterwards, or simultaneously, injected with tetanus toxin,

it does not give very satisfactory results when it is injected after tetanic symptoms have made their appearance. It would appear that in such cases the tetanus poison has become too firmly bound up with the protoplasm of the nerve cells, and has already done a considerable amount of damage.

(b) More Chronic Infective Diseases {Tissue Parasites).

Tuberculosis. — In no quarter of the field of preventive medicine have more important results accrued from the discovery of a. specific infective organism than in the case of Koch's demonstration and separation in pure culture of the tubercle bacillus and the association of this bacillus with the transmission of tuberculosis. In connexion with diagnosis — both directly from observation of the organism in the sputum and urine of tuberculous patients, and indirectly through the tuberculin test, especially on animals — this discovery has been of very great importance; and through a study of the life-history of the bacillus and its relation to animal tissues much has been learned as to the prevention of tuberculosis, and something even as to methods of treatment. One of the great difficulties met with in the earlier periods of the study of this organism was its slow, though persistent, growth. At first cultivations in fluid media were not kept sufficiently long under observation to allow of its growth; it was exceedingly difficult to obtain pure cultures, and then to keep them, and in impure cultures the tubercle bacilli were rapidly overgrown. Taken directly from the body, they do not grow on most of the ordinary media, and it was only when Koch used solidified blood-serum that he succeeded in obtaining pure cultures. Though they may now be demonstrated by what appear to be very simple methods, before these methods were devised it was practically impossible to obtain any satisfactory results.

The principle involved in the staining of the tubercle bacillus is that when once it has taken up fuchsin, or gentian violet, it retains the stain much more firmly than do most organisms and tissues, so that if a specimen be thoroughly stained with fuchsin and then decolonized by a mineral acid — 25% of sulphuric acid, say — although the colour is washed out of the tissues and most other organisms, the tubercle bacilli retain it; and even after the section has been stained with methylene-blue, to bring the other tissues and organisms into view, these baciUi still remain bright red, and stand out prominently on a blue background. If a small fragment of tuberculous tissue be pounded in a sterile mortar and smeared over the surface of inspissated blood-serum solidified at a comparatively low temperature, and if evaporation be prevented, dry scaly growths make their appearance at the end of some fourteen days. If these be reinoculated through several generations, they ultimately assume a more saprophytic character, and will grow in broth containing 5% of glycerin, or on a peptone beef-agar to which a similar quantity of glycerin has been added. On these media the tubercle bacillus grows more luxuriantly, though after a time its virulence appears to be diminished. On blood-serum its virulence is preserved for long periods if successive cultivations be made. It occurs in the tissues or in cultivations as a dehcate rod or thread 1-5 to 3'5ft in length and about 0-2 to o-s;u in thickness (see Plate II., fig. 15). It is usually slightly curved, and two rods may be arranged end to end at an open angle. There is some doubt as to whether tubercle bacilli contain spores, but little masses of deeply-stained protoplasm can be seen, alternating with clear spaces within the sheath; these clear spaces have been held to be spores. This organism is found in the lungs and sputum in various forms of consumption; it is met with in tuberculous ulcers of the intestine, in the lymph spaces around the vessels in tuberciflous meningitis, in tuberculous nodules in all parts of the body, and in tuberculous disease of the skin — lupus. It is found also in the tuberculous lesions of animals; in the throat-glands, tonsils, spleen and bones of the pig; in the spleen of the horse; and in the lungs and pleura of the cow. Tuberculosis may be produced artificially by injecting the tubercle bacillus into animals, some being much more susceptible than others. Milk drawn from an udder in which there are breaking-down tuberculous foci, may contain an enormous