The Causes and Treatment of Asylum Dysentery

Abstract

Until the specific causes of the various types of colitis are ascertained dysentery may be regarded as a group of symptoms which are presumably the result of microbic action, although it does not follow that the organisms which have been isolated from the intestines are invariably the specific cause of the symptoms, or that their presence will necessarily produce the symptoms; even the Shiga (or Flexner) bacillus, which is looked upon by many as the origin of non-amoebic tropical dysentery, has been found in the fæces of healthy persons (v. Allchin). It is probable that the specific organisms are some of the various bacilli and micrococci which are commonly to be found in the intestines, and which are normally benign in character, but through certain influences within and around the subject, become pathogenic.