Volume 1

Final report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the relations of human and animal tuberculosis. Part II. Appendix. : 1.- Certain human viruses of irregular type. 2.- The excretion of tubercle bacilli in the milk of animals. 3.- Swine tuberculosis. 4.- Immunity.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Tuberculosis (Human and Bovine)
Date:
1904-1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Final report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the relations of human and animal tuberculosis. Part II. Appendix. : 1.- Certain human viruses of irregular type. 2.- The excretion of tubercle bacilli in the milk of animals. 3.- Swine tuberculosis. 4.- Immunity. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    glands were removed from the right side of the neck and from these a culture was obtained which was identical in every respect with a bovine tubercle bacillus ; fifteen months later caseous glands from the opposite side of the neck were excised ; emulsions from these glands did not produce tuberculosis in guinea-pigs and all the culture tubes sown remained sterile. [H. 86. CP. furnishes an additional example of the apparent death of tubercle bacilli in human tuberculous tissues. Emulsions of lung and a bronchial gland of the child though demonstrated to contain tubercle bacilli did not produce tuberculosis in guinea-pigs, and culture tubes sown with the emulsions remained sterile. The child died of tuberculous meningitis and cultures were obtained from the meninges. See page 11.] In the second group there are five cases. The original material in these cases was calcareous mesenteric glands from adults who died from diseases unrelated to tuberculosis (the ages of the patients varied from 21 to 90 years) and showed at the post-mortem examination, with the exception of the mesenteric glands, nothing- suggestive of tuberculosis. Emulsions were made from the glands in each case and inoculated into guinea-pigs ; none developed tuberculosis. SUMMARY. Cultures from 54 cases of tuberculosis in human beings have been investigated. The material furnishing the cultures was obtained from cases of alimentary tuberculosis (eleven), tuberculous meningitis (three), general miliary tuberculosis (two), tuberculosis of the suprarenal bodies (one), tuberculosis of bones and joints (four) and pulmonary tuberculosis (thirty-three) ; in twenty-nine of the cases of pulmonary tuberculosis the cultures investigated were obtained from the sputum. In those cases of generalised tuberculosis caused by bacilli which had entered the body by way of the alimentary tract cultures were isolated not only from the glands nearest the points of entry of the bacilli but also from the disseminated lesions, and in several of the other cases in which there were lesions in different parts of the body more than one strain has been isolated and separately investigated. In two instances human and bovine tubercle bacilli were isolated from the same patient and these were in each instance associated together in the same lesion, in one case a caseous retro-peritoneal gland in an old man aged 70 years who died of pneumonia and showed tuberculosis limited to the glands draining the small intestine, in the other a caseous bronchial gland in a child aged 4.^ years who died of general tuberculosis. From other lesions in these two patients human tubercle bacilli only were isolated. The cultures isolated from the other cases fall readily into one or other of two groups, one containing bacilli indistinguishable from bovine tubercle bacilli, the other bacilli (human tubercle bacilli) which grow more luxuriantly and have lower virulence for the rabbit and much lower virulence for the calf than the bovine tubercle bacillus. Bovine tubercle bacilli were isolated from four of the ten cases of alimentary tuberculosis in children and from two of the cases of pulmonary tuberculosis (sputum). The four children in question died as a result of infection with bovine tubercle bacilli, the cause of death in one case being general tuberculosis, in another tuber- culous meningitis, in another tuberculous peritonitis and in the fourth stricture of the intestines following tuberculous ulceration ; the ages of the children were 1, 2, 4, and Sh years. The two patients from whose sputum bovine tubercle bacilli were obtained were adults aged 21 and 31 years. Pure cultures of bovine tubercle bacilli were isolated from one of these patients on four different occasions (twice direct) and from the other on two (once direct). Human tubercle bacilli were isolated from the remaining 46 cases, i.e., six cases of alimentary tuberculosis, thirty-one of pulmonary tuberculosis and nine of various other forms of tuberculosis.