Prof. Baumgarten has just published in theCtbl. f. d. Med. Wiss., 25, 1882, the following easy method to detect in the expectorated matter of phthisical persons the pathogenic tubercle bacilli:
Phthisical sputa are dried and made moist with very much diluted potash lye (1 to 2 drops of a 33 per cent. potash lye in a watch glass of distilled water). The tubercle bacilli are then easily recognized with a magnifying power of 400 to 500. By light pressure upon the cover glass the bacilli are easily pressed out of the masses of detritus and secretion. To prevent, however, the possibility of mistaking the tubercle bacilli for other septic bacteria, or vice versa, the following procedure is necessary: After the examination just mentioned, the cover glass is lifted up and the little fluid sticking to its under side allowed to dry, which is done within one or two minutes. Now the cover glass is drawn two or three times rapidly through a gas flame; one drop of a diluted (but not too light) common watery aniline solution (splendid for this purpose is the watery extract of a common aniline ink paper) is placed upon the glass. When now brought under the microscope, all the septic bacteria appear colored intensely blue, while the tubercle bacilli are absolutely colorless, and can be seen as clearly as in the pure potash lye. We may add, however, that Klebs considers his own method preferable.
As the whole procedure does not take longer than ten minutes, it is to be recommended in general practice. The consequences of Koch's important discovery become daily more apparent, and their application more practicable.
[Concluded from SUPPLEMENT No. 384, page 6132.]
Observations in Washington, D. C., September 5, 1879, 8:35 A.M., Boston time, near Congressional Cemetery.
1. Seized with sneezing on my way to cemetery. Examined nasal excretions and found no Palmellæ.
2. Pool near cemetery. Examined a spot one inch in diameter, raised in center, green, found Oedegonium abundant. Some desmids, Cosmarium binoculatum plenty. One or two red Gemiasmas, starch, Protuberans lamella, Pollen.
3. Specimen soft magma of the pool margin. Oedogonium abundant, spores, yeast plants, dirt.
4. Sand scraped. No organized forms but pollen, and mobile spores of some cryptogams.
5. Dew on grass. One stellate compound plant hair, one Gemiasma verdans, two pollen.
6. Grass flower dew. Some large white sporangia filled with spores.
7. Grass blade dew, not anything of account. One pale Gemiasma, three blue Gemiasmas, Cosmarium, Closterium. Diatoms, pollen, found in greenish earth and wet with the dew. Remarks: Observations made at the pool with clinical microscope, one-quarter inch objective. Day cloudy, foggy, hot.
8. Green earth in water way from pump near cemetery. Anabaina plentiful. Diatoms, Oscillatoriaceæ. Polycoccus species. Pollen, Cosmarium, Leptothrix, Gemiasma, old sporangia, spores many. Fungi belonging to fruit. Puccinia. Anguillula fluviatilis.
9. Mr. Smith's blood. Spores, enlarged white corpuscles. Two sporangia? Gemiasma dark brown, black. Mr. Smith is superintendent Congressional Cemetery. Lived here for seven years. Been a great sufferer with ague. Says the doctors told him that they could do no more for him than he could for himself. So he used Ayer's ague cure with good effect for six months. Then he found the best effect from the use of the Holman liver ague pad in his own case and that of his children. From his account one would infer that, notwithstanding the excellence of the ague pad, when he is attacked, he uses blue mass, followed with purgatives, then 20 grains of quinine. Also has used arsenic, but it did not agree with him. Also used Capsicum with good results. Had enlarged spleen; not so now.
2d specimen of Mr. Smith's blood. Stelline, no Gemiasma. 3d specimen, do. One Gemiasma. 4th specimen. None. 5th specimen. Skin scraped showed no plants. 6th specimen. Urine; amyloid bodies; spores; no sporangia.
United States Magazine store grounds. Observation 1. Margin of Eastern Branch River. Substance from decaying part of a water plant. Oscillatoriaceæ. Diatoms. Anguillula. Chytridium. Dirt. No Gemiasma.
Observation 2. Moist soil. Near by, amid much rubbish, one or two so-called Gemiasmas; white, clear, peripheral margin.
Observation 3. Green deposit on decaying wood. Oscillatoriaceæ. Protuberans lamella, Gemiasma alba. Much foreign matter.
Mr. Russell, Mrs. R., Miss R., residents of Magazine Grounds presented no ague plants in their blood. Sergeant McGrath, Mrs. M., Miss M., presented three or four sporangias in their blood. Dr. Hodgkins, some in urine. Dr. H.'s friend with chills, not positive as to ague. No plants found.
Observations in East Greenwich, R.I., Aug. 16, 1877.
1. At early morn I examined greenish earth, northwest of the town along the margin of a beautiful brook. Found the Protuberans lamella, the Gemiasma alba and rubra. Observation 2. Found the same. Observation 3. Found the same.
Observation 4. Salt marsh below the railroad bridge over the river.
The scrapings of the soil showed beautiful yellow and transparent Protuberans, beautiful green sporangias of the Gemiasma verdans.
Observation 5. Near the brook named was a good specimen of the Gemiasma plumba. While I could not find out from the lay people I asked that any ague was there, I now understand it is all through that locality.
Observation at Wellesley, Mass., Aug. 20, 1877.
No incrustation found. Examined the vegetation found on the margin of the Ridge Hills Farm pond. Among other things I found an Anguillula fluviatilis. Abundance of microspores, bacteria. Some of the Protococci. Gelatinous masses, allied to the protuberans, of a light yellow color scattered all over with well developed spores, larger than those found in the Protuberans. One or two oval sporanges with double outlines. This observation was repeated, but the specimens were not so rich. Another specimen from the same locality was shown to be made up of mosses by the venation of leaves.
Mine host with whom I lodged had a microscopical mount of the Protococcus nivalis in excellent state of preservation. The sporangia were very red and beautiful, but they showed no double cell wall.
In this locality ague is unknown; indeed, the place is one of unusual salubrity. It is interesting to note here to show how some of the algæ are diffused. I found here an artificial pond fed by a spring, and subject to overflow from another pond in spring and winter. A stream of living water as large as one's arm (adult) feeds this artificial pond, still it was crowded with the Clathrocyotis æruginosa of some writers and the Polycoccus of Reinsch. How it got there has not yet been explained.
The migration of the ague eastward is a matter of great interest; it is to be hoped that the localities may be searched carefully for your plants, as I did in New Haven.
In this connection I desire to say something about the presence of the Gemiasmas in the Croton water. The record I have given of finding the Gemiasma verdans is not a solitary instance. I did not find the gemiasmas in the Cochituate, nor generally in the drinking waters of over thirty different municipalities or towns I have examined during several years past. I have no difficulty in accounting for the presence of the Gemiasmas in the Croton, as during the last summer I made studies of the Gemiasma at Washington Heights, near 165th St. and 10th Ave., N.Y.
Plate VIII. is a photograph of a drawing of some of the Gemiasmas projected by the sun on the wall and sketched by the artist on the wall, putting the details in from microscopical specimens, viewed in the ordinary way. This should make the subject of another observation.
I visited this locality several times during August and October, 1881. I found an abundance of the saline incrustation of which you have spoken, and at the time of my first visit there was a little pond hole just east of the point named that was in the act of drying up. Finally it dried completely up, and then the saline and green incrustations both were abundant enough. The only species, however, I found of the ague plants was the Gemiasma verdans. On two occasions of a visit with my pupils I demonstrated the presence of the plants in the nasal excretions from my nostrils. I had been sneezing somewhat.
There is one circumstance I would like to mention here: that was, that when, for convenience' sake, my visits were made late in the day, I did not find the plants abundant, still could always get enough to demonstrate their presence; but when my visits were timed so as to come in the early morning, when the dew was on, there was no difficulty whatever in finding multitudes of beautiful and well developed plants.
To my mind this is a conclusive corroboration of your own statements in which you speak of the plants bursting, and being dissipated by the heat of the summer sun, and the disseminated spores accumulating in aggregations so as to form the white incrustation in connection with saline bodies which you have so often pointed out.
I also have repeated your experiments in relation to the collection of the mud, turf, sods, etc., and have known them to be carried many hundred miles off and identified. I have also found the little depressions caused by the tread of cattle affording a fine nidus for the plants. You have only to scrape the minutest point off with a needle or tooth pick to find an abundance by examination. I have not been able to explore many other sites, nor do I care, as I found all the materials I sought in the vicinity of New York.
To this I must make one exception; I visited the Palisades last summer and examined the localities about Tarrytown. This is an elevated location, but I found no Gemiasmas. This is not equivalent to saying there were none there. Indeed, I have only given you a mere outline of my work in this direction, as I have made it a practice to examine the soil wherever I went, but as most of my observations have been conducted on non-malarious soils, and I did not find the plants, I have not thought it worth while to record all my observations of a negative character.
I now come to an important part of the corroborative observations, to wit, the blood.
I have found it as you predicted a matter of considerable difficulty to find the mature forms of the Gemiasmas in the blood, but the spore forms of the vegetation I have no difficulty in finding. The spores have appeared to me to be larger than the spores of other vegetations that grow in the blood. They are not capable of complete identification unless they are cultivated to the full form. They are the so-called bacteria of the writers of the day. They can be compared with the spores of the vegetation found outside of the body in the swamps and bogs.
You said that the plants are only found as a general rule in the blood of old cases, or in the acute, well marked cases. The plants are so few, you said, that it was difficult to encounter them sometimes. So also of those who have had the ague badly and got well.
Observation at Naval Hospital, N.Y., Aug., 1877. Examined with great care the blood of Donovan, who had had intermittent fever badly. Negative result.
The same was the result of examining another case of typho-malarial (convalescent); though in this man's blood there were found some oval and sometimes round bodies like empty Gemiasmas, 1/1000 inch in diameter. But they had no well marked double outline. There were no forms found in the urine of this patient. In another case (Donovan,) who six months previous had had Panama fever, and had well nigh recovered, I found no spores or sporangia.
Observations made at Washington, D.C., Sept., 1879. At this time I examined with clinical microscope the blood of eight to ten persons living near the Congressional Cemetery and in the Arsenal grounds. I was successful in finding the plants in the blood of five or more persons who were or had been suffering from the intermittent fever.
In 1877, at the Naval Hospital, Chelsea, I accidentally came across three well marked and well defined Gemiasmas in the blood of a marine whom I was studying for another disease. I learned that he had had intermittent fever not long before.
Another positive case came to my notice in connection with micrographic work the past summer. The artist was a physician residing in one of the suburban cities of New York. I had demonstrated to him Gemiasma verdans, showed how to collect them from the soil in my boxes. And he had made outline drawings also, for the purposes of more perfectly completing his drawings. I gave him some of the Gemiasmas between a slide and cover, and also some of the earth containing the soil. He carried them home. It so happened that a brother physician came to his house while he was at work upon the drawings. My artist showed his friend the plants I had collected, then the plants he collected himself from the earth, and then he called his daughter, a young lady, and took a drop of blood from her finger. The first specimen contained several of the Gemiasmas. The demonstration, coming after the previous demonstrations, carried a conviction that it otherwise would not have had.
I have found them in the urine of persons suffering or having suffered from intermittent fever.
When I was at the Naval Hospital in Brooklyn one of the accomplished assistant surgeons, after I had showed him some plants in the urine, said he had often encountered them in the urine of ague cases, but did not know their significance. I might multiply evidence, but think it unnecessary. I am not certain that my testimony will convince any one save myself, but I know that I had rather have my present definite, positive belief based on this evidence, than to be floundering on doubts and uncertainties. There is no doubt that the profession believe that intermittents have a cause; but this belief has a vagueness which cannot be represented by drawings or photograph. Since I have photographed the Gemiasma, and studied their biology, I feel like holding on to your dicta until upset by something more than words.
In relation to the belief that no Algæ are parasitic, I would state on Feb. 9, 1878, I examined the spleen of a decapitated speckled turtle with Professor Reinsch. We found various sized red corpuscles in the blood in various stages of formation; also filaments of a green Alga traversing the spleen, which my associate, a specialist in Algology, pronounced one of the Oscillatoriaceæ. These were demonstrated in your own observations made years ago. They show that Algæ are parasitic in the living spleen of healthy turtles.
This leads to the remark that all parasitic growths are not nocent. I understand you take the same position. Prof. Reinsch has published a work in Latin, "Contributiones ad Algologiam," Leipsic, 1874, in which he gives a large number of drawings and descriptions of Algæ, many of them entophytic parasites on other animals or Algæ. Many of these he said were innocent guests of their host, but many guest plants were death to their host. This is for the benefit of those who say that the Gemiasmas are innocent plants and do no harm. All plants, phanerogams or cryptogams, can be divided into nocent or innocent, etc., etc. I am willing to change my position on better evidence than yours being submitted, but till then call me an indorser of your work as to the cause and treatment of ague.
Respectfully, yours, ------
There are quite a number of others who have been over my ground, but the above must suffice here.
PLATE X.--EXPLANATION OF FIGURES.--1, Spore with thick laminated covering, constant colorless contents, and dark nucleus. B, Part of the wall of cell highly magnified, 0.022 millimeter in thickness. 2, Smaller spore with verruculous covering. 3, Spore with punctulated covering. 4, The same. 5, Minute spores with blue-greenish colored contents, 0.0021 millimeter in diameter. 6, Larger form of 5. 7, Transparent spherical spore, contents distinctly refracting the light, 0.022 millimeter in diameter. 8, Chroococcoid minute cells, with transparent, colorless covering, 0.0041 millimeter in diameter. 9, Biciliated zoospore. 10, Plant of the Gemiasma rubra, thallus on both ends attenuated, composed of seven cells of unequal size. 11, Another complete plant of rectangular shape composed of regularly attached cells. 12, Another complete, irregularly shaped and arranged plant. 13, Another plant, one end with incrassated and regularly arranged cells. 14, Another elliptical shaped plant, the covering on one end attenuated into a long appendix. 15, Three celled plant. 16, Five celled plant. 10-16 magnified 440/1.
PLATE X.--EXPLANATION OF FIGURES.--1, Spore with thick laminated covering, constant colorless contents, and dark nucleus. B, Part of the wall of cell highly magnified, 0.022 millimeter in thickness. 2, Smaller spore with verruculous covering. 3, Spore with punctulated covering. 4, The same. 5, Minute spores with blue-greenish colored contents, 0.0021 millimeter in diameter. 6, Larger form of 5. 7, Transparent spherical spore, contents distinctly refracting the light, 0.022 millimeter in diameter. 8, Chroococcoid minute cells, with transparent, colorless covering, 0.0041 millimeter in diameter. 9, Biciliated zoospore. 10, Plant of the Gemiasma rubra, thallus on both ends attenuated, composed of seven cells of unequal size. 11, Another complete plant of rectangular shape composed of regularly attached cells. 12, Another complete, irregularly shaped and arranged plant. 13, Another plant, one end with incrassated and regularly arranged cells. 14, Another elliptical shaped plant, the covering on one end attenuated into a long appendix. 15, Three celled plant. 16, Five celled plant. 10-16 magnified 440/1.
I wish to conclude this paper by alluding to some published investigations into the cause of ague, which are interesting, and which I welcome and am thankful for, because all I ask is investigations--not words without investigations.
The first the Bartlett following:
Dr. John Bartlett is a gentleman of Chicago, of good standing in the profession. In January, 1874, he published in theChicago Medical Journala paper on a marsh plant from the Mississippi ague bottoms, supposed to be kindred to the Gemiasmas. In a consideration of its genetic relations to malarious disease, he states that at Keokuk, Iowa, in 1871, near the great ague bottoms of the Mississippi, with Dr. J. P. Safford, he procured a sod containing plants that were as large as rape seeds. He sent specimens of the plants to distinguished botanists, among them M. C. Cook, of London, England. Nothing came of these efforts.
2. In August, 1873, Dr. B. visited Riverside, near Chicago, to hunt up the ague plants. Found none, and also that the ague had existed there from 1871.
3. Lamonot, a town on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, was next visited. A noted ague district. No plants were found, and only two cases of ague, one of foreign origin. Dr. B. here speaks of these plants of Dr. Safford's as causing ague and being different from the Gemiasmas. But he gives no evidence that Safford's plants have been detected in the human habitat. In justice to myself I would like to see this evidence before giving him the place of precedence.
4. Dr. B., Sept. 1, 1873, requested Dr. Safford to search for his plants at East Keokuk. Very few plants and no ague were found where they both were rife in 1871.
5. Later, Sept. 15, 1873, ague was extremely prevalent at East Keokuk, Iowa, where two weeks before no plants were found; they existed more numerously than in 1871.
6. Dr. B. traced five cases of ague, in connection with Dr. Safford's plants found in a cesspool of water in a cellar 100 feet distant. It is described as a plant to be studied with a power of 200 diameters, and consisting of a body and root. The root is a globe with a central cavity lined with a white layer, and outside of these a layer of green cells. Diameter of largest plant, one-quarter inch. Cavity of plant filled with molecular liquid. Root is above six inches in length, Dr. B. found the white incrustation; he secured the spores by exposing slides at night over the malarious soil resembling the Gemiasmas. He speaks of finding ague plants in the blood, one-fifteen-hundredth of an inch in diameter, of ague patients. He found them also in his own blood associated with the symptoms of remittent fever, quinine always diminishing or removing the threatening symptoms. Professors Babcock and Munroe, of Chicago, call the plants either the Hydrogastrum of Rabenhorst, or the Botrydium of the Micrographic Dictionary, the crystalline acicular bodies being deemed parasitic. Dr. B. deserves great credit for his honest and careful work and for his valuable paper. Such efforts are ever worthy of respect.
There is no report of the full development found in the urine, sputa, and sweat. Again, Dr. B. or Dr. Safford did not communicate the disease to unprotected persons by exposure. While then I feel satisfied that the Gemiasmas produce ague, it is by no means proved that no other cryptogam may not produce malaria. I observed the plants Dr. B. described, but eliminated them from my account. I hope Dr. B. will pursue this subject farther, as the field is very large and the observers are few.
When my facts are upset, I then surrender.
[Footnote: Translated from theArchives de la Medecine Navale, vol. xxx., no. 7, July, 1878, by A. Sibley Campbell, M.D., Augusta, Ga.]
Before giving a succinct account of the discovery of paludal miasma and of its natural history, I ought in the first place to state that I have not had the opportunity of reading or studying the great original treatise of Professor Salisbury. I am acquainted with it only through a resume published in theAmerican Journal of the Medical Sciencesfor the year 1866, new series, vol. li. p. 51. At the beginning of my investigations I was engaged in a microscopic examination of the water and mud of swampy shores and of the marshes, also with a comparison of their microphytes with those which might exist in the urine of patients affected with intermittent fevers. Nearly three months passed without my being able to find the least agreement, the least connection. Having lost nearly all hope of being able to attain the end which I had proposed, I took some of the slime from the marshes and from the masses of kelp and Confervæ from the sea shores, where intermittent fevers are endemic, and placed them in saucers under the ordinary glass desiccators exposed on a balcony, open for twenty-four hours, the most of the time under the action of the burning rays of the sun. With the evaporated water deposited within the desiccators, I proceeded to an examination, drop by drop. I at length found that which I had sought so long, but always in vain.
The parasite of intermittent fever, which I have termed Limnophysalis hyalina, and which has been observed before me by Drs. J. Lemaire and Gratiolet (Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires de l'Academie des Sciences, Paris, 1867, pp. 317 and 318) and B. Cauvet (Archives de Medecine Navale, November, 1876), is a fungus which is developed directly from the mycelium, each individual of which possesses one or several filaments, which are simple or dichotomous, with double outlines, extremely fine, plainly marked, hyaline, and pointed. Under favorable conditions, that is, with moisture, heat, and the presence of vegetable matter in decomposition, the filaments of mycelium increase in length. From these long filaments springs the fungus. The sporangia, or more exactly the conidia, are composed of unilocular vesicles, perfectly colorless and transparent, which generally rise from one or both sides of the filaments of the mycelium, beginning as from little buds or eyes; very often several (two to three) sporangia occur placed one upon the other, at least on one side of the mycelium.
With a linear magnitude of 480, the sporangia have a transverse diameter of one to five millimeters, or a little more in the larger specimens. The filaments of mycelium, under the same magnitude, appear exceedingly thin and finer than a hair. The shape of the conidia, though presenting some varieties, is, notwithstanding, always perfectly characteristic. Sometimes they resemble in appearance the segments of a semicircle more or less great, sometimes the wings of butterflies, double or single. It is only exceptionally that their form is so irregular.
Again, when young, they are perfectly colorless and transparent; sometimes they are of a beautiful violet or blue color (mykianthinin mykocyanin). Upon this variety of the Limnophysalis hyalina depends the vomiting of blue matters observed by Dr. John Sullivan, at Havana, in patients affected with pernicious intermittent fever (algid and comatose form). In the perfectly mature sporangia, the sporidia have a dark brown color (mykophaein). From the sporidia, the Italian physicians, Lanzi and Perrigi, in the course of their attempts at its cultivation, have seen produced the Monilia penicinata friesii, which is, consequently, the second generation of the Limnophysalis hyalina, in which alternate generation takes place, admitting that their observations may be verified. The sporangia are never spherical, but always flat. When they are perfectly developed, they are distinctly separated from their filament of mycelium by a septum--that is to say, by limiting lines plainly marked. It is not rare, however, to see the individual sporangia perfectly isolated and disembarrassed of their filament of mycelium floating in the water. It seems to me very probable that these isolated sporangia are identical with the hyaline coagula so accurately described by Frerichs, who has observed them in the blood of patients dying of intermittent fevers. But if two sporangia are observed with their bases coherent without intermediary filaments of mycelium, it seems to me probable that the reproduction has taken place through the union, which happens in the following manner: Two filaments of mycelium become juxtaposed; after which the filaments of mycelium disappear in the sporangia newly formed, which by this same metamorphosis are deprived of the faculty of reproducing themselves through the filaments of myclium of which they are deprived. The smallest portion of a filament of mycelium evidently possesses the faculty of producing the new individuals.
It is unquestionable that the Limnophysalis hyalina enter into the blood either by the bronchial mucous membrane, by the surface of the pulmonary vesicles, or by the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal, most often, no doubt, by the last, with the ingested water; this introduction is aided by the force of suction and pressure, which facilitates their absorption. It develops in the glands of Lieberkuhn, and multiplies itself; after which the individuals, as soon as they are formed, are drawn out and carried away in the blood of the circulation.
The Limnophysalis hyalina is, in short, a solid body, of an extreme levity, and endowed with a most delicate organization. It is not a miasm, in the common signification of the term; it does not carry with it any poison; it is not vegetable matter in decomposition, but it flourishes by preference amid the last.
In regard to other circumstances relative to the presence of this fungus, there are, above all, two remarkable facts, namely, its property of adhering to surfaces as perfectly polished as that of a mirror, and its power of resistance against the reagents, if we except the caustic alkalies and the concentrated mineral acids. This power of resisting the ordinary reagents explains in a plausible manner why the fungus is not destroyed by the digestive process in the stomach, where, however, the acid reaction of the gastric juice probably arrests its development--is that of the schistomycetes in general--and keeps it in a state of temporary inactivity. This property of adhering to smooth surfaces explains perhaps the power of the Eucalyptus globulus in arresting the progress of paludal miasm (?). But it is evident that other trees, shrubs, and plants of resinous or balsamic foliage, as, for example, the Populus balsamifera, Cannabis sativa, Pinus silvestris, Pinus abies, Juniperus communis, have equally, with us, the same faculty; they are favorable also for the drying of the soil, and the more completely, as their roots are spreading, more extended, and more ramified.
In order to demonstrate the presence of the limnophysalis in the blood of patients affected with intermittent fever during the febrile stage, properly speaking, it appeared necessary for me to dilute the blood of patients with a solution of nitrate of potassa, having at 37.5°C. the same specific gravity as the serum of the blood. With capillary tubes of glass, a little dilated toward the middle, of the same shape and size as those which are used in collecting vaccine lymph, I took up a little of the solution of nitrate of potassa above indicated. After this I introduced the point of an ordinary inoculating needle under the skin, especially in the splenic region, where I ruptured some of the smallest blood-vessels of the subcutaneous cellular tissue. I collected some of the blood which flowed out or was forced out by pressure, in the capillary tubes just described, containing a solution of potassa; after which I melted the ends with the flame of a candle. With all the intermittent fever patients whose blood I have collected and diluted during the febrile stage, properly speaking, I have constantly succeeded in finding the Limnophysalis hyalina in the blood by microscopic examination.
It is only necessary for me to mention here that it is of the highest importance to be able to demonstrate the presence of fungus in the blood of the circulation and in the urine of patients in whom the diagnosis is doubtful. The presence of the Limnophysalis hyalina in the urine indicates that the patient is liable to a relapse, and that his intermittent fever is not cured, which is important in a prognostic and therapeutic point of view.
When the question is to prevent the propagation of intermittent fevers, it is evident that it should be remembered that the Limnophysalis hyalina enters into the blood by the mucous membrane of the organs of respiration, of digestion, and the surface of the pulmonary vesicles. We have also to consider the soil, and the water that is used for drinking.
In regard to the soil, several circumstances are very worthy of attention. It is desirable, not only to lower as much as possible the level of the subterranean water (grunawassen) by pipes of deep drainage, the cleansing, and if there is reason, the enlargement (J. Ory) of the capacity of the water collectors, besides covering and keeping in perfect repair the principal ditches in all the secondary valleys to render the lands wholesome, but also to completely drain the ground, diverting the rain water and cultivating the land, in the cultivation of which those trees, shrubs, and plants should be selected which thrive the most on marshy grounds and on the shores and paludal coasts of the sea, and which have their roots most speading and most ramified. Some of the ordinary grasses are also quite appropriate, but crops of the cereals, which are obtained after a suitable reformation of marshy lands, yield a much better return. After the soil in the neighborhood of the dwellings has been drained and cultivated with care, and in a more systematic manner than at present, the bottoms of the cellars should be purified as well as the foundations of the walls and of the houses.
The water intended for drinking, which contains the Limnophysalis hyalina, should be freed from the fungus by a vigorous filtration. But, as it is known, the filtering beds of the basins in the water conduits are soon covered with a thick coating of confervæ, and the Limnophysalis hyalina then extends from the deepest portions of the filtering beds into the filtered water subjacent. It is for this reason that it is absolutely necessary to renew so often the filtering beds of the water conduits, and, at all events, before they have become coated with a thick layer of confervæ. The disappearance of intermittent fevers will testify to the utility of these measures. It is for a similar reason that wooden barrels are so injurious for equipages. When the wood has begun to decay by the contact of the impure water, the filaments of mycelium of the Limnophysalis hyalina penetrate into the decayed wood, which becomes a fertile soil for the intermittent fever fungi.
The employment for the preparation of mortar of water not filtered, or of foul, muddy sand which contains the Limnophysalis hyalina, explains how intermittent fevers may proceed from the walls of houses. This arises also from the pasting of wall-paper with flour paste prepared with water which contains an abundance of the fungi of intermittent fever.
The miasm in the latter case is therefore endoecic, or more exactly entoichic. With us the propagation of intermittent fever has been observed in persons occupying rooms scoured with unfiltered water containing the Limnophysalis hyalina in great quantity.
The following imperial ordinance was published on the 25th of March, 1877, by the chief of admiralty of the German marine. It has for its object the prevention and eradication of infectious diseases:
"In those places where infectious diseases, according to experience, are prevalent and unusually severe and frequent, it is necessary to abstain as much as possible from the employment of water taken from without the ship for cleansing said vessel, and also for washing out the hold when the water of the sea or of a river, in the judgment of the commander of a vessel, confirmed by the statement of the physician, is shown to be surcharged with organic matter liable to putrefaction. With this end in view, if you are unable to send elsewhere for suitable water, you must make use of good and fresh water, but with the greatest economy. In that event the purification of the hold must be accomplished by mechanical means or by disinfectants."
"As I have demonstrated by my investigations that in the distillation of paludal water, and that from the marshy shores of the sea, the Limnophysalis hyalina, which is impalpable, is carried away and may be detected again after the distillation, it must be insisted that the water intended to be used for drinking on shipboard shall be carefully filtered before and after its distillation."
The Klebs-Tommasi and Dr. Sternberg's report, as summarized in the Supplement No. 14, National Board of Health Bulletin, Washington, D.C., July 18, I would cordially recommend to all students of this subject.
I welcome these observers into the field. Nothing but good can come from such careful and accurate observations into the cause of disease. For myself I am ready to say that it may be that the Roman gentlemen have bit on the cause of the Roman fever, which is of such a pernicious type. I do not see how I can judge, as I never investigated the Roman fever; still, while giving them all due credit, and treating them with respect, in order to put myself right I may say that I have long ago ceased to regard all the bacilli, micrococci, and bacteria, etc., as ultimate forms of animal or vegetable life. I look upon them as simply the embryos of mature forms, which are capable of propagating themselves in this embryonal state. I have observed these forms in many diseased conditions; many of them in one disease are nothing but the vinegar yeast developing, away from the air, in the blood where the full development of the plant is not apt to be found. In diphtheria I developed the bacteria to the full form--the Mucor malignans. So in the study of ague, for the vegetation which seems to me to be connected with ague, I look to the fully developed sporangias as the true plant.
Again, I think that crucial experiments should be made on man for his diseases as far as it is possible. Rabbits, on which the experiments were made, for example, are of a different organization and food than man, and bear tests differently. While there are so many human beings subject to ague, it seems to me they should be the subjects on whom the crucial tests are to be made, as I did in my labors.
As far as I can see, Dr. Sternberg's inquiries tend to disprove the Roman experiments, and as he does not offer anything positive as a cause of ague, I can only express the hope that he will continue his investigations with zeal and earnestness, and that he will produce something positive and tangible in his labors in so interesting and important a field.
I would then that all would join hands in settling the cause of this disease; and while I do not expect that all will agree with me, still, I shall respect others' opinions, and so long as I keep close to my facts I shall hope my views, based on my facts, will not be treated with disrespect.
Gemiasma verdans and Gemiasma rubra collected Sept. 10, 1882, on Washington Heights, near High Bridge. The illustrations show the manner in which the mature plants discharge their contents.
Plate VIII. A, B, and C represent very large plants of the Gemiasma verdans. A represents a mature plant. B represents the same plant, discharging its spores and spermatia through a small opening in the cell walls. The discharge is quite rapid but not continuous, being spasmodic, as if caused by intermittent contractions in the cell walls. The discharge begins suddenly and with considerable force--a sort of explosion which projects a portion of the contents rapidly and to quite a little distance. This goes on for a few seconds, and then the cell is at rest for a few seconds, when the contractions and explosions begin again and go on as before. Under ordinary conditions it takes a plant from half an hour to an hour to deliver itself. It is about two-thirds emptied. C represents the mature plant, entirely emptied of its spore contents, there remaining inside only a few actively moving spermatia, which are slowly escaping. The spermatia differ from the spores and young plants in being smaller, and of possessing the power of moving and tumbling about rapidly, while the spores of young plants are larger and quiescent. D, E, F, and G represent mature plants belonging to the Gemiasma rubra. D represents a ripe plant, filled with spores, embryonic plants, and spermatia. E represents a ripe plant in the act of discharging its contents, it being about half emptied. F represents a ripe plant after its spore and embryonic plant contents are all discharged, leaving behind only a few actively moving spermatia, which are slowly escaping. G represents the emptied plant in a quiescent state.
Figs. A, B, C represent an unusually large variety of the Gemiasma verdans. This species is usually about the size of the rubra. This large variety was found on the upper part of New York Island, near High Bridge, in a natural depression where the water stands most of the year, except in July, August, and September, when it becomes an area of drying, cracked mud two hundred feet across. As the mud dries these plants develop in great profusion, giving an appearance to the surface as if covered thickly with brick dust.
These depressions and swaily places, holding water part of the year, and becoming dry during the malarial season, can be easily dried by means of covered drains, and grassed or sodded over, when they will cease to grow; this vegetation and ague in such localities will disappear.
The malarial vegetations begin to develop moderately in July, but do not spring forth abundantly enough to do much damage till about the middle of August, when they in ague localities spring into existence in vast multitudes, and continue to develop in great profusion till frost comes.
Author Algæ of France, 1866; Latest Observations on Algology, 1867; Chemical Investigation of the Connections of the Lias and Jura Formations, 1859; Chemical Investigation of the Viscum Album, 1860; Contributions to Algology and Fungology, 1874-75, vol. i.; New Investigation of the Microscopic Structure of Pit Coal, 1881; Micrographic Photographs of the Structure and Composition of Pit Coal, 1888.
Dr. Cutter writes me September 28, 1882: "My dear Professor: By this mail I send you a specimen of the Gemiasma rubra of Salisbury, described in 1862, as found in bogs, mud holes, and marshes of ague districts, in the air suspended at night, in the sputa, blood, and urine, and on the skin of persons suffering with ague. It is regarded as one of the Palmellaceæ. This rubra is found in the more malignant and fatal types of the disease. I have found it in all the habitats described by Dr. Salisbury. Both he and myself would like you to examine and hear what you have to say about it."
The substance of clayish soil contains, besides fragments of shells of larger diatoms (Suriella synhedra), shells of Navicula minutissima, Pinnularia viridis. Spores belonging to various cryptogams.
1. Spherical transparent spores with laminated covering and dark nucleus--0.022 millimeter in diameter.
2. Spherical spores with thick covering of granulated surface.
3. Spherical spores with punctulated surface--0.007 millimeter in diameter.
4. Very minute, transparent, bluish-greenish colored spores, with thin covering and finely granulated contents--0.006 millimeter in diameter.
5. Chroococcoid cells with two larger nuclei--0.0031 millimeter in diameter. Sometimes biciliated minute cells are found; without any doubt they are zoospores derived from any algoid or fungoid species.
I cannot say whether there exists any genetic connection between these various sorts of spores. It seems to me that probably numbers 1-4 represent resting states of the hyphomycetes.
No. 5 represents one and two celled states of chroococcus species belong to Chroococcus minutus.
The crust of the clayish earth is covered with a reddish brown covering of about half a millimeter in thickness. This covering proves to be composed, under the microscope, of cellular filaments and various shaped bodies of various composition. They are made up of cells with densely and coarsely granulated reddish colored contents--shape, size, and composition are very variable, as shown in the figures.The cellular bodies make up the essential organic part of the clayish substance, and, without any doubt, if anything of the organic compounds of the substance is in genetical connection with the disease, these bodies would have this role. The structure and coloration of cell contents exhibit the closest alliance to the characteristics of the division of Chroolepideæ and of this small division of Chlorophyllaceous Algæ, nearest to Gongrosira--a genus whose five to six species are inhabitants of fresh water, mostly attached to various minute aquatic Algæ and mosses. Each cell of all the plants of this genus produces a large number of mobile cells--zoospores.
Fig. 9 represents very probably one zoospore developed from these plants as figured from 10 to 16.
M. Berthelot, in theJournal de Pharmacie et de Chimiefor March, states that from peculiar physical relations he is led to suspect that the true element carbon is unknown, and that diamond and graphite are substances of a different order. Elementary carbon ought to be gaseous at the ordinary temperature, and the various kinds of carbon which occur in nature are in reality polymerized products of the true element carbon. Spectrum analysis is thought to confirm this view; and it is supposed the second spectrum seen in a Geissler tube belongs to gaseous carbon. This spectrum, which has been recognized along with that of hydrogen in the light of the tails of comets, indicates a carbide, probably acetylene.
When tinned iron serves for containing alimentary matters, it is essential that the tin employed should be free from lead. The latter metal is rapidly oxidized on the surface and is dissolved in this form in the neutral acids of vegetables, meat, etc. The most exact method of demonstrating the presence of lead consists in treating the alloy--so-called tin--withaqua regiacontaining relatively little nitric acid. The whole dissolves; the excess of acid is driven off by evaporation at a boiling heat, and the residue, diluted with water, is saturated with hydrogen sulphide. The iron remains in solution, while the mixed lead and tin sulphides precipitated are allowed to digest for a long time in an alkaline sulphide. The tin sulphide only dissolves; it is filtered off and converted into stannic acid, while the lead sulphide is transformed into sulphate and weighed as such.
To a cold solution containing 1 per cent. of bromine, 1 per cent. of caustic soda at 36° B. is added, then the material, to be bleached is first wet and then immersed in this bath until completely decolorized. It is passed into a newly-acidulated bath, rinsed, and dried. After the bromine bath has been used up, it is regenerated by adding 1 per cent. of sulphuric acid, which liberates the bromine. To the same bath caustic soda is added, which regenerates the hypobromite of soda. The hydrofluosilicic acid can be used, instead of the sulphuric acid, with greater advantage. A bath used up can also be regenerated by means of the electric current.
These colors are not suitable for converting white wine into red, but they can be used for giving wines a faint red tint, for darkening pale red wines, and in making up a factitious bouquet essence, which is added to red wines. The most suitable methods for the detection of magenta are those given by Romei and Falieres-Ritter. If a wine colored with archil and one colored with cudbear are treated treated according to Romei's method, the former gives, with basic lead acetate, a blue, and the latter a fine violet precipitate. The filtrate, if shaken up with amylic alcohol, gives it in either case a red color. A knowledge of this fact is important, or it may be mistaken for magenta. The behavior of the amylic alcohol, thus colored red, with hydrochloric acid and ammonia is characteristic. If the red color is due to magenta, it is destroyed by both these reagents, while hydrocholoric acid does not decolorize the solutions of archil and cudbear, and ammonia turns their red color to a purple violet. If the wine is examined according to the Falieres-Ritter method in presence of magenta, ether, when shaken up with the wine, previously rendered ammoniacal, remains colorless, while if archil or cudbear is present the ether is colored red. Wartha has made a convenient modification in the Falieres-Ritter method by adding ammonia and ether to the concentrated wine while still warm. If the red color of the wool is due to archil or cudbear, it is extracted by hydrochloric acid, which is colored red. Ammonia turns the color to a purple violet. König mixed 50 c.c. wine with ammonia in slight excess, and places in the mixture about one-half grm. clean white woolen yarn. The whole is then boiled in a flask until all the alcohol and the excess of ammonia are driven off. The wool taken out of the liquid and purified by washing in water and wringing is moistened in a test-tube with pure potassa lye at 10 per cent. It is carefully heated till the wool is completely dissolved, and the solution, when cold, is mixed first with half its volume of pure alcohol, upon which is carefully poured the same volume of ether, and the whole is shaken. The stratum of ether decanted off is mixed in a test-tube with a drop of acetic acid. A red color appears if the slightest trace of magenta is present. The shaking must not be too violent, lest an emulsion should be formed. If the wine is colored with archil, on prolonged heating, after the addition of ammonia, it is decolorized. If it is then let cool and shaken a little, the red color returns. If the wool is taken out of the hot liquid after the red color has disappeared, and exposed to the air, it takes a red color. But if it is quickly taken out of the liquid and at once washed, there remains merely a trace of color in the wool. If these precautions are observed, magenta can be distinguished from archil with certainty according to König's method. As the coloring-matter of archil is not precipitated by baryta and magnesia, but changed to a purple, the baryta method, recommended by Pasteur, Balard, and Wurtz, and the magnesia test, are useless. Magenta may in course of time be removed by the precipitates formed in the wine. It is therefore necessary to test not merely the clear liquid, but the sediment, if any.--Dr. B. Haas, in Budermann's Centralblatt.--Analyst.
Panax Victoriæ is a compact and charming plant, which sends up numbers of stems from the bottom in place of continually growing upward and thus becoming ungainly; it bears a profusion of elegantly curled, tasseled, and variegated foliage, very catching to the eye, and unlike any of its predecessors. The other, P. dumosum, is of similar habit, the foliage being crested and fringed after the manner of some of our rare crested ferns.--The Gardeners' Chronicle.
PANAX VICTORIÆ.
PANAX VICTORIÆ.
[Footnote: Read at an evening meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society, London, April 4, 1883.]
Beneath a white birch tree growing in my garden I noticed, yesterday evening, a very wet place on the gravel path, the water of which was obviously being fed by the cut extremity of a branch of the birch about an inch in diameter and some ten feet from the ground. I afterward found that exactly fifteen days ago circumstances rendered necessary the removal of the portion of the branch which hung over the path, 4 or 5 feet being still left on the tree. The water or sap was dropping fast from the branch, at the rate of sixteen large drops per minute, each drop twice or thrice the size of a "minim," and neither catkins nor leaves had yet expanded. I decided that some interest would attach to a determination both of the rate of flow of the fluid and of its chemical composition, especially at such a stage of the tree's life.
A bottle was at once so suspended beneath the wound as to catch the whole of the exuding sap. It caught nearly 5 fluid ounces between eight and nine o'clock. During the succeeding eleven hours of the night 44 fluid ounces were collected, an average of 4 ounces per hour. From 8:15 to 9:15 this morning, very nearly 7 ounces were obtained. From 9:15 to 10:15, with bright sunshine, 8 ounces. From 10:15 until 8:15 this evening the hourly record kept by my son Harvey shows that the amount during that time has slowly diminished from 8 to a little below 7 ounces per hour. Apparently the flow is faster in sunshine than in shade, and by day than by night.
It would seem, therefore, that this slender tree, with a stem which at the ground is only 7 inches in diameter, having a height of 39 feet, and before it has any expanded leaves from whose united surfaces large amounts of water might evaporate, is able to draw from the ground about 4 liters, or seven-eighths of a gallon of fluid every twenty-four hours. That at all events was the amount flowing from this open tap in its water system. Even the topmost branches of the tree had not become, during the fifteen days, abnormally flaccid, so that, apparently, no drainage of fluid from the upper portion of the tree had been taking place. For a fortnight the tree apparently had been drawing, pumping, sucking--I know not what word to use--nearly a gallon of fluid daily from the soil in the neigborhood of its roots. This soil had only an ordinary degree of dampness. It was not wet, still less was there any actually fluid water to be seen. Indeed, usually all the adjacent soil is of a dry kind, for we are on the plateau of a hill 265 feet above the sea, and the level of the local water reservoir into which our wells dip is about 80 feet below the surface. My gardener tells me that the tree has been "bleeding" at about the same rate for fourteen of the fifteen days, the first day the branch becoming only somewhat damp. During the earlier part of that time we had frosts at night, and sunshine, but with extremely cold winds, during the days. At one time the exuding sap gave, I am told by two different observers, icicles a foot long. A much warmer, almost summer, temperature has prevailed during the past three days, and no wind. This morning the temperature of the sap as it escaped was constant at 52° F., while that of the surrounding air was varying considerably.
The collected sap was a clear, bright, water-like fluid. After a pint had stood aside for twelve hours, there was the merest trace of a sediment at the bottom of the vessel. The microscope showed this to consist of parenchymatous cells, with here and there a group of the wheel-like or radiating cells which botanists, I think, term sphere-crystals. The sap was slightly heavier than water, in the proportion of 1,005 to 1,000. It had a faintly sweet taste and a very slight aromatic odor.
Chemical analysis showed that this sap consisted of 99 parts of pure water with 1 part of dissolved solid matter. Eleven-twelfths of the latter were sugar.
That the birch readily yields its sap when the wood is wounded is well known. Philipps, quoted by Sowerby, says: