A Lecture on the Treatment of Ringworm
Authors: J. F. Payne
Journal: BMJ (1885)

uscles, many of them filled with peculiar minute straight bacilli.The same bacilli occur also outside the mucus-corpuscles.They are never missed, even where the 'comma-bacilli' are."After thinking over this matter in connection with my own experience, and after seeing Dr. Klein's specimens at the meeting at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, I ventured to suggest at that meeting that it was possible that these bacilli are only young cholera-bacilli, and I thought so for two reasons.In the first place, it is precisely in these mucus-flakes that one finds, on cultivation, that the largest numbers of the cholera- bacilli are present; while, on microscopic examination, there may, as Dr. Klein says, eppear to be very few of these organisms: hence some of the forms in which the curve is not very marked must also be cholera-bacilli.And, in the second place, the specimen which I saw at the meeting looked very like a sl)ecimen of young cholera-bacilli (see Fig. 1).Of course, I know that the reply to this is, that Dr. Klein has cultivated these bacilli, and has found that they are not cholera- bacilli.My answer to that is that, without doubt, Dr. Klein has cultivated small straight bacilli from the contents of the intestine, but that is no proof that the small cultivated bacllli were derived from the bacilli seen in the mucus-corpuscles ; it is impossible to make a cultivation from a single mucus-corpuscle, without getting at the same time the other bacteria which are present in the contents of the intestine.Small straight bacilli, similar in growth to those exhibited by Dr.Klein, can be cultivated from the contents of normal intestines, and would naturally be present in the contents of a choleraic intestine.After all, it seems to me that these straight bacilli do not deserve the attention they have received ; for Dr. Klein has never said that they only occur in the intestine in Asiatic cholera; and, unless that can be demonstrated, they evidently have no real connection with the disease.Dr. Klein also attributes the results in the successful cases of inocu- lation of cholera-bacilli to septicemia, or to the effects of the opera- tion.The former idea is incorrect, because the operations, both in Dr. Koch's cases and in mine, were performed strictly antiseptically; and in the guinea-pigs, in my case, there were no bacteria in the blood and tissues.Dr. Klein refers, as a similar example, to fatal epidemics of diarrhoea in rabbits, in which there are no bacteria in the blood or internal organs.Of this I am quite aware, and it was to an epidemic of this kind that I referred iu Series I and II in my report on micro- cocci in relation to wounds, etc. (BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL, Septem- ber 20th, 1884).BuLt the animals on which I experimented with cholera-bacilli in the way described were guinea-pigs, and they are not, so far as I know, subject to similar epidemics.I have never operated on rabbits, because I understood that they were quite refrac- tory to the cholera-bacillus.From what has been said, it will be evident that no facts have been brought forward in opposition to Dr. Koch's research which can bear criticism.Dr. Koch's facts remain now as correct as when he first published them.He said that this organism was constantly present in Asiatic cholera, and that it was present nowhere else.These statements have now been amply confirmed; and it is perhaps the most striking evidence in favour of the precision of Dr. Koch's methods, and of the care which he has devoted to the subject, that, though other bacilli, of somewhat similar appearance, have since been dis- covered, yet, by the use of his methods, it has been found easy to distinguish them one from another, and from the cholera- organisIIm.MEDICAL SALARIES.-TheFarnham Guardians have increased the salary of Dr. William Haig Brodie, as medical officer for the Seal district, from £21 to £30 per annum, and fees.-The Lurgan Guardians have increased the salary of Dr. Samuel Agnew, medical officer for the Lurgan No. 1 Dispensary district, £20 per annum.-TheMiddles-