A paper on Koch's researches on tuberculosis, and abstract of a lecture on some of the more recent facts and observations concerning the bacillus of tubercle / by George A. Heron.

  • George Allan Heron
Date:
1883
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A paper on Koch's researches on tuberculosis, and abstract of a lecture on some of the more recent facts and observations concerning the bacillus of tubercle / by George A. Heron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/24 page 16
    Few subjects have raised more discussion amongst medi¬ cal men than that one which is introduced by the question, “ What is tubercle ? ” Of the many answers which this question has received, probably none has attracted more widespread attention than that given to it by Dr. Koch’s researches. Those of us who accept his teaching as true, must look upon every case in which the bacillus of tubercle is found, as tuberculous. During the last twelve months, there has been gradually accumulating a mass of evidence in favour of the view that this bacillus is the constant asso¬ ciate of tubercle. This evidence comes from observers in the Old World and in the New. It comes from men who work in the dead-rooms of hospitals, as well as from those whose observations are made at the bedsides of the sicK; and this evidence is already so strong, that it seems to me we are justified in stating it to be a fact, that wherever tubercle is, there the bacillus of tubercle is also. Whether this organism is the cause of tubercle is another question; and it is not to be expected that men who have spent long years in the study of tubercle, and who have their own views about tubercle, will readily accept Koch’s teaching as all true—unless, indeed, their own observations have already prepared them for the acceptance of such views. Of one thing we may feel sure, that the subject will not rest where it is, and that every week will add more and more to the weight of the evidence which must, probably very soon, definitively settle the important question—Has Koch dis¬ covered the cause of tubercle ? Should that question be answered in the affirmative, then every case in which the bacillus of tubercle is found, must be classed under the head of parasitic diseases; and all discussion as to whether miliary tubercle, chronic phthesis, scrofula, perlsucht, &c.s are tubercle, or whether each of them is a distinct disease, must end with the establishment of the fact that they are all due to the parasite which Koch has discovered. And now, gentlemen, let us turn to another part of the subject. Not only is the bacillus of tubercle found in the dead body, but it is also easily obtainable from certain cases of disease in the living man. It has been found in the breath and in the sputa of persons suffering from tuber¬ cular disease implicating the lungs; it has been found in the urine in cases of tubercular disease of the kidney; it has been found in the fseces in cases of tubercular ulceration of the intestines, in that connection enabling a diagnosis to be made between tubercular and amyloid disease, in one
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