The bacteria in Asiatic cholera Author:Edward Klein Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE DISTRIBUTION OF COMMA-BACILLI. In the preceding account by Koch we see, then, that (a) the comma-bacilli occur in the intestinal dejecta du... more »ring the acute stage of the disease : (b) the comma-bacilli are present in the mucus-flakes and in the fluid of the contents of the small intestine, chiefly and most numerously in the lower portion of the ileum ; towards the upper part of the ileum their number decreases, and in the jejunum they become very scarce—hence the vomit is as a rule free from them, and when they are present it is no doubt owing to regurgitation : (c) the comma-bacilli are present in the tissue of the mucous membrane of the lower ileum, in the epithelium of the surface, in the lymphatic tissue of the mucosa, within the cavity of the crypts of Lieberkiihn as well as between the epithelium lining these crypts and their limiting membrana propria, but especially in the lymph- follicles of the Peyer's patches; these according to Koch are in pure acute typical cases visible as swollen hyperaemic structures, the blood-vessels of the marginal portion being distended and filled with blood, and hence strongly marked ; in these blood-vessels Koch states that he found them in great abundance : (d) the more acute and typical a case ofcholera, the more numerous are the comma-bacilli found in the lower ileum, so much so that in the very acute cases, marked by the whole chain of symptoms characteristic of a typical case of cholera, the lower ileum contains the comma- bacilli "almost in pure cultivation": (e) no comma-bacilli occur in the blood of the general circulation, in the mesenteric glands, or any other organ. The observations which I have made with regard to the general distribution of the comma-bacilli enable me to say this, that while agreeing with Ko...« less