Abstract
AT the present moment when the Continent has again become the battle-field between cholera and the human race, all questions concerning the cause, diffusion, and prevention of the cholera virus must take a prominent place in the deliberations on the best sanitary measures to be adopted in combating this insidious foe. Almost all practical preventive measures in this country and on the Continent as regards cholera and other infectious maladies are based on the assumption—supported by a good deal of evidence both theoretical and practical—that the virus is paniculate, and, as indicated by its self-multiplication within the affected person, is a living organism. But the nature of this supposed organism of cholera has, until quite recently, been altogether mysterious. As is well known, Prof. Koch and colleagues, sent out last year by the German Government to investigate the cholera in Egypt and India, have ascertained that in the rice-water stools voided by patients suffering from the disease there are present, besides micrococci and bacilli common to the evacuations of other than cholera patients, peculiar curved bacteria, so-called “;comma-shaped” bacilli, which Koch has not been able to discover in any cases of diarrhoea. These “comma-shaped” bacilli Koch has succeeded in isolating by artificial culture. Unfortunately cholera has hitherto not been found transmissible to the lower animals, and therefore the function of these “comma-shaped” bacilli must at present remain unknown. All we can therefore say is that Koch has shown that in cholera evacuations there exist, besides micrococci and straight bacilli, other organisms also characterised by this —that they are curved or comma-shaped. Whatever else has been said by Koch, his followers, and critics, scientific and daily papers, as to these “comma-shaped” bacilli being the cause of cholera, is simply and purely a supposition, which, as we shall presently show, is wanting in the most essential elements.
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K., E. The Cholera Germ . Nature 30, 237–238 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/030237a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/030237a0