Tuberculin in diagnosis and treatment : a text-book of the specific diagnosis and therapy of tuberculosis for practitioners and students / By Dr. Bandelier ... and Dr. Roepke.

  • Bandelier, B. (Bruno), 1871-1924.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tuberculin in diagnosis and treatment : a text-book of the specific diagnosis and therapy of tuberculosis for practitioners and students / By Dr. Bandelier ... and Dr. Roepke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    56/350 (page 36)
    pigs, Engel and Bauer [50] have confirmed in tubercular suck- lings and young children ; with appropriate tuberculin treatment they were uniformly successful in demonstrating the existence of antibodies producing fixation of complement in the serum, not formed like the agglutinins in normal cells, but in the tubercular tissue. Moreover, Bauer and Engel succeeded in proving by quantitative tests that with the quantity of tuberculin injected a corresponding amount of these antibodies was formed in the blood, increasing to a maximum. It deserves special notice that a considerable quantity of antibodies was only formed when relatively high doses had been reached. Bauer and Engel's results in the specific treatment of tuber- culosis in children agree with those of Jochmann and Moller [51 and 52] in adults. Thev succeeded in general in producing anti- bodies in the serum of the patients treated, and this only when he approached the maximum dose. They are more reserved with regard to the conclusions to be drawn from the phenomenon. They saw patients clinically completely cured with increasing formation of antibodies; others did as well without them ; others, again, grew worse and died with continual increase of antibodies. In spite of these conflicting results, they with Koch looked upon the occurrence of the phenomenon as the indication of the forma- tion of certain protective forces, which, in the cases which turned out unfavourablv, may have come too late or not in sufficient quantity. These results seem to prove the inferior value of exclusively small doses of tuberculin as expressly demanded by Wright's opsonic theory and by several authors. The increase of antibodies can possibly be used as a general guide to the further course of treatment, so that the method of complement fixation may eventuallv prove valuable for the control and direction of specific treatment—a prospect which, by means of the continued estimation of agglutinins and the opsonic index, has not yet been fulfilled. It would also be of practical importance, as the technique of fixation of complement is one which can be carried out without difficulty in every institution and hospital.