London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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St Giles (Camberwell) 1883

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Camberwell]

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200
thin fluid, containing lowly vegetable organisms,
and shed epithelial cells ; and in the discharge of
loose stools from the bowel. The method adopted
by Dr. Sanderson to infect the mice, was to soak
pieces of filter paper in fresh Cholera evacuations,
or in the contents of the bowels of patients dead of
cholera, to dry them, to ascertain by weighing the
quantity of solid matter thus added to them, to cut
them into pieces an inch square, to soak them in
bacon fat, and then to administer them to the mice.
The mice under these circumstances ate them
greedily. The consequences were : that of the mice
fed with paper prepared from evacuations which
had not been allowed to stand more than twentyfour
hours, or on the first day after passing, 11 per
cent. were affected; that of those fed with paper
prepared on the second day, 36 per cent. ; that of
those fed with paper prepared on the third day?
every one; that of those fed with paper prepared
on the fourth day, 71 per cent. ; and that of those
fed with paper prepared on the fifth day, 40 per
cent. Paper prepared subsequently had no effect.
These experiments shew : that the Cholera evacuations
have little or no intensity of action when
perfectly tresh ; that their virulence increases up to
the third day, diminishing during the fourth and