A report on Koch's treatment of tubercular disease / by J.W. Springthorpe.

  • Springthorpe, J. W. (John William), 1855-1933.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on Koch's treatment of tubercular disease / by J.W. Springthorpe. 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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    from questions of expense, and the extractives, the active principle, being present only in a fraction of -1 per cent. But we are not told in what media the bacilli have been cultivated, whether in blood-serum, human or otherwise, or different glycerine peptone cultures, though, as we know, the results of growth may vary considerably with the difference of the media. It may be, it probably is, the case, that Koch's cultures are from the most suitable media, but of this, we have as yet no satisfactory guarantee. Indeed, the best mode of preparation may yet have to be discovered. And though the genius of Koch as an experimentalist, shines out through every step of the long journey through which he has travelled before he has reached his present goal, yet it seems probable that he owes the germinant idea to France, and the successful method to England. For it was in the laboratory of the immortal Pasteur that it was first discovered how the weakened cultivations of anthrax bacilli rendered the animal into which they were injected immune against anthrax ; and how attenuated emulsions of the spinal cords of rabid rabbits, when progressively injected, conferred immunity from the idtimate effects of hydrophobia. The indebtedness of Koch to Pasteur is generally recognised. But his probable indebtedness to Hankin, of Cambridge, for his final success, is not yet so generally understood. I say probable indebtedness, because the matter will remain unsettled until Koch fully discloses his method. As this is so little known, I take the liberty of dwelling somewhat upon it. It had been known as far back as 1887 at least, that immunity against various diseases could be produced by the injection of the soluble products of the life of microbes. But until Hankin's time, all isolating experiments were conducted with the ptomaines made by the microbes. And though many such were isolated, no cases were ever recorded in which immunity had been produced thereby. It was in October 1889, that the observer mentioned, isolated from anthrax cultures, an albumose—a poisonous proteid of a totally different nature to the ptomaines—and by means of this albumose, produced immunity against anthrax. This discovery completely altered the methods of experimentation. Shortly after- wards, Brieger and Frankel, working in the same laboratory, and abandoning old methods in favour of others practically of the same nature as Hankin's, isolated similar bodies from cultures of tetanus, cholera, and typhoid, though apparently without then succeeding in the production of immunity thereby. In May 1S90,