Etiology of tubercle, with comments on Doctor Robert Kochs bacilli / by Henry Mac Cormac.

  • M'Cormac, Henry, 1800-1886.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Etiology of tubercle, with comments on Doctor Robert Kochs bacilli / by Henry Mac Cormac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    peritoneal cavity of ten rabbits. After death, the peritoneal coat, when placed under the microscope, could be seen full of bacilli-laden spores, while two rabbits not operated upon remained exempt. Rats, rabbits, cats, and dogs were next dealt with similar- ly, and with similar results. The foregoing facts, Dr. Koch considers, justify the pretention, ausspruch, that bacilli are not only the attendants, but the actual virus of tubercle. As to whence bacilli come, and how they gain access to the living organism, he thinks they derive from dried up phthisical sputa which adhere to dust, stciubpartikelchen, and as thus are respired. In fact guinea-pigs inoculated in the cellular tissue with phthisical sputa two, and even eight weeks dried, became tuberculous just as if recent tubercular matters had been resorted to. Dr. Koch does not meet the question as to how man and brute incur bacilli in the first instance. His ingenious supposition that the disease is con- veyed by dust, is purely hypothetical. Before there can be tubercular bacilli, the man or brute, it is obvious, must be tuberculous. How, then, do man and brute become so primarily. If indeed tubercle were communicable like plague or cholera, and other dreaded infections, gefurchtetsten infectionslcrank- heiten, pest, cholera u. s. w., as Dr. Koch seems to contend, how could any one, physician, nurse, or other attendant, escape ? In two families, recently under my observation, in each of which there was a victim to phthisis, eight women in all were for months in closest contact with the sufferers, yet they now enjoy perfect health. There was an officer