Tuberculosis : its nature, prevention and treatment with special reference to the open air treatment of phthisis / by Alfred Hillier.

  • Alfred Peter Hillier
Date:
1900
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tuberculosis : its nature, prevention and treatment with special reference to the open air treatment of phthisis / by Alfred Hillier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    guiding principles of all public and_ private effort against the encroachments of the disease. These principles form the only rational basis of action, either for the officers of public health or the physician who is called upon to treat the disease. Koch conducted a series of researches into the nature and origin of tubercle in 1882, and published his results.* Koch’s researches and essay constitute a piece of scientific work unique in the present generation. Many-experimenters and writers have revealed fresh facts, and contributed fresh ideas on the subject of tuberculosis since his essay was written, but the intimate pathology, the rationale of the incidence of the disease, remain as originally described by Koch practically unaltered and unassailed. The task which Koch accomplished was to show: 1. That in all active tuberculous lesions tubercle bacilli were to be found, in some in abundance, in others sparsely. Thus in the rapidly developing tubercle they are abundant, in more chronic lymph gland and bone affections they are much more diffuse. 2. That tubercle bacilli have staining properties which distinguish them from all other bacilli. Khrlich’s method of staining was the one adopted by Koch, although later investigators have employed the Ziehl- Neelsen and other methods, which will receive consideration later (vide p. 15). But using Ehrlich’s method, Koch discovered that only one other known form of bacillus had staining properties like the tubercle bacillus—namely, the bacillus of Leprosy. This, as he points out, is the more interest- * « Mittheilungen aus dem Gesundheitsamte,” vol. 1i., 1884. This paper was translated by Mr. Stanley Boyd, and published as ‘lhe Etiology of 'Tuberculosis” by the New Sydenham Society in their collection of “Recent Essays by Various Authors on Bacteria in Relation to Diseases,’ under the editorship of Mr. Watson Cheyne,
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