Surgical bacteriology / by Nicholas Senn.

  • Nicholas Senn
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical bacteriology / by Nicholas Senn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    down to two suppoi^itions : i. Transmission from parents to child of a predisposition to certain diseases. 2. Transmission from mother to foetus of the essential cause of the disease. The supposed hereditary predisposition is interpreted as meaning anatomical or physiological defects in the tissues, which render the organism susceptible to the action of subsequent specific causes. The existence of minute anatomical defects of blood- vessels, lymphatic glands and vessels, connective-tissue spaces, etc., is looked upon as conditions which favor localization of floating microbes, which find their way into the body during post-natal life. An inherited defective vital resistance on the part of the tissues to the action of pathogenic bacteria is also con- sidered by many in the light of an hereditary influence in the causation of disease. The conditions are recognized, but no satisfactory, demonstrative, or experimental proofs of their exist- ence have been furnished, and yet the immunity of some animals to certain diseases cannot be explained in any other way than in attributing to the tissues anatomical or physiological properties which protect the organism against the action of certain micro- organisms, which, in other animals not so protected, produce a fatal disease. Clinical experience has also shown that a great difference is found among different persons in reference to the susceptibility to the same form of infection. In many per- sons, for instance, inoculation with a pure culture of tubercle bacilli would be a perfectly harmless procedure; in some it would produce a local, latent tuberculosis; while in a few, rendered more susceptible to this form of infection by antecedent heredi- tary or acquired causes, the inoculation of the same number of bacilli would be followed by.rapid and extensive destruction of tissue, and death by early and diffuse dissemination. The same can be said of nearly all, if not all, infectious diseases. If their existence has not been demonstrated, we are, nevertheless, forced to recognize the influence of certain as yet unkown conditions inherent in the tissues, and often traceable to an hereditary cause, which favor or resist the action of microbic causes. During the last few years great progress has been made in showing that an hereditary transmission of diseases, in many instances, at least,
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