Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A text-book of pathology / by Alfred Stengel. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![described the Spirillum Berolinensis, obtained from the water of the Spree in 18J)3. Dunbar and Oergel isolated a similar organ- ism from the Avater of the Elbe, and a number of others of like character are known. The relations, however, of the different forms to each other and the differentiation of these varieties have not as yet been definitely determined. Pathogenicity.—Some of the forms described produce violent gastro-intestinal disturbance and death in a certain proportion of animals prepared by injection of opiuna and alkalinization of the intestinal tract with soda and then fed with pure eultures of the organisms. They are evidently highly irritating bacteria, and some remote relationship seems to exist between them. This, however, cannot be positively asserted. TUBERCULOSIS. Definition.—The term tuberculosis refers to various condi- tions due to infection with the tubercle-bacillus, no matter what the form or individual peculiarities of the case. The name was originally employed because of the occurrence of small nodules or tubercles. It must be remembered, however, that other diseases show small miliary nodules, perhaps indistinguishable to the naked eye from miliary tubercles, and that tuberculosis some- times occurs without a single tubercle. ]^tiology.—Tuberculosis is infectious and contagious, the ba- cilli being transferred by the secretions and excretions from dis- eased persons to a susceptible individual through the air, food, drink, or in other ways. The infectious character of the disease was long suspected, but was definitely proved by Villemin in 1865, and in 1880 Koch succeeded in isolating the infective ba- cillus. Predisposing causes are of some importance. Formerly family susceptibility was thought an all-important cause, and the disease was supposed to be transmitted directly in families. At the present time we recognize the transmission of susceptibility, and very rarely transmission of the disease itself, from parent to child. Susceptible persons frequently show delicate organization with poor development of the body, particularly of the chest. Besides inherited susceptibility, acquired predisposition may result from occupations which lower vitality, from grief, prolonged ner- vous strain and exhaustion ; and some one of the organs may be specially predisposed by injuries, as in eases of tuberculosis occur- ring in the lungs of those inhaling sharj) particles of metal, (U)al, and the like. Such mechanical lesions j)repare a place of lesser resistance, and tubercle-bacilli more easily gain a footing than in normal tissues. The tubercie-hacillm is a rod-shaped oi'ganism about 1.5 to 3.5 // in length and from 0.2 to 0.5 n in breadth. It often occurs in](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21981668_0225.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
