West London Medical Journal (13)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...in determining the source of respiratory tuberculosis, or, in fact, of any other disease. It is obvious that the main question for the practical physician to be convinced of is--does the tubercle bacillus pass through the intestinal mucosa like the fine particles of China ink without causing any lesion or leaving any local evidence of its point of entrance. It may at once be asserted without fear of contradiction that this vitally important fact has been conclusively proven by experiments too numerous to mention. Nicholas and Descos found that tubercle bacilli administered in fatty food to dogs could be found in the chyle within three or four hours; Desoubry and Porcher, Ravenel, Romer and von Behring, Besanti and Panisset, Schlossman and Engel and many others have demonstrated the same fact not only in the case of dogs, but in the guinea-pig and other animals, the intestinal surface being found jn each case to be intact. It is, however, to the exhaustive researches of Calmette and Guerin and Breton that we must look for the conclusive evidence which renders Koch's position no longer tenable. These observers injected into the stomachs of guinea-pigs through the oesophageal tube a finely divided emulsion of living bacilli ground up in an agate mortar with a decoction of linseed, the constant result being that the tubercle bacilli were absorbed by the intestinal surface producing extensive tuberculous deposits in the mesenteric glands, lungs and other viscera. When the animals lived beyond thirty days the lungs were invariably found to be studded with caseous tubercles and the broncho-tracheal glands also always suffered. In guinea-pigs which survived the injections from fifty to sixty days the deep cervical glands were nearly always found to be...