The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1885-06-01
The Discoverer of Cholera Inocula-
tiOn.

The young Catalan physician, the discov-
erer of cholera inoculation, DR.. Jaime Ferran,
is only SO years of age, and, after passing
through the customary curriculum at the
institutes of Tortosa and Tarragona, took
his NJ. D. degree at Barcelona. BE has been
in practice for several years, says a corre-
spondent of the London Standard, and is
already well known in this country and
abroad for his works on micro-telephony in
in 1878, and for his curious investigations on
micro-biology and parasites, which were re;
warded by the the Royal Academy of Medi
cine in Madrid. DIR. Ferran was sent to
Toulon and Marseilles during the last epi-
demic of 1884, and he spent several months
with German, French and Italian surgeons
studying the epidemic, and especially DR..
Kochs theories on the comma bacillus or
cholera microbe. These studies impelled DIR.
Ferran to pursue his Investigations on his re-
turn to his own country, and he thus came
to the conclusion that DR.. Koch had observ-
ed only one of the many stages of this mi
crobe's successive developments. Senior Fer
ran has discovered that, by submitting the
comma bacillus to certain chemical elements
very similar to the bile of animals and to the
gastric juice of the human stomach, this mi
RN9oC0
riable stages of development, in one of which
he has detected the eggs, which are, in his
opinion, the real generators and propagators
of cholera.
DIR. Ferran has made many experiments
on men and animals which lead him to stats
that incubation by this bacillus can produce
the death of animals with every symptom
characteristic of cholera, and that the inoc-
ulation of human beings creates symptoms
Identical in their nature, but with less inten-
sitY and no fatal results. The incubation is
| generally practised upon the lower parts of
both arms. In two or three hours it pro-
duces local irritation, difficulty in moving
| the limb and dull pain. After about four or
| five hours the pulse rises to ia and even
| 120, and the heat of the body to 81 and 40
| centigrade. The person thus inoculated feels
| languid, shivers, loses appetite, and suffers
| from nausea, diarrhea, cramp and sleepless-
| ness. After twenty-foUr hours these symp-
| toms abate, and they generally disappear In
| forty-eight hours. All successive inocula-
| tions, even to the extent of eight cubic CEN
| times OF virus, prove utterly harmless, both
/ in adults and children. In animals, after
inoculation, it has been observed that sue
cessive and larger doses of virus introduced
| by in oculation, also prove harmless, where
| as these same doses produce death with
choleraic symptoms in any animals not pre-
/ viously inoculated.
| DR.. Ferran has also observed that the local
| symptoms resulting from incubation seldom
vary, whereas the general symptoms vary
| according to each case. Not a single case
has occurred in which successive inocula-
tions in men or animals have caused death.
He has tried his experiments on himself and
on other medical men and on hundreds of
believers in his preservatlVe. He thinks him.
self, therefore, justified in expecting from
these lnoculations the same results as have
been obtained in smallpox and carbuncle
The Madrid Academy of Medicine sent down
a commission of medical men, and their re-
port is highly favorable to DR.. Ferran's ex-
periments. Foreign scientific and medical
societies and surgeons have taken great in
teIest in these experiments and have con-
| graduated DR.. Ferran.