Volume 2

Final report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the relations of human and animal tuberculosis.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Tuberculosis
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Final report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the relations of human and animal tuberculosis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    local lesion was softened and caseous, the adjacent glands were enlarged and caseous, the spleen and liver con- tained moderately numerous caseous nodules, there were scattered caseous nodules in the lungs and three in the kidneys, and the thoracic and most of the ab- dominal lymphatic glands were tuberculous to some extent. A rhesus monkey inoculated with an equiva- lent dose of the culture died of general tuberculosis in 49 days. Dr. Cobbett inoculated a chimpanzee (No. 1) sub- cutaneously with 1 milligramme of a human (Group IT) culture. The animal died in 50 days of general] tuber- culosis. (See Appendix to 2nd Interim Report, Vol. II, page 1170.) These two experiments show that the chimpanzee is very susceptible to the human tubercle bacillus. One additional experiment has been made on the chimpanzee with bovine tubercle bacilli since tbe publication of the 2nd Interim Report. A chim- panzee (No. 24) was inoculated subcutaneously with 44 0:00001 milligramme of culture from Virus B. IV, and died 107 days afterwards of severe general tuber- culosis (the culture used in this experiment had been passed through a series of four chimpanzees, and was unchanged in cultural characters and virulence for the monkey). This is the third inoculation experiment which has been made on the chimpanzee with bovine tubercle bacilli. The cther two are published in the Appen- dix to the 2nd Interim Report (Vol. I, page 186, Vol. IIT, page 114). One of these chimpanzees re- ceived 1 milligramme subcutaneously, and died of general tuberculosis in 55 days; the other received 0:001 milligramme, and died of general tuberculosis in 87 days. * The ehimpanzee, like the rhesus monkey, is there- fore very susceptible both to the human and to the bovine tubercle bacillus, an extremely small dose of either kind of bacillus being capable of producing rapidly fatal general tuberculosis, The experiments do not bring out any difference in the virulence for the chimpanzee of the two kinds of tubercle bacilli. Virus, irate Dose. mncdr ig of Result. Bovine Cultures, B, IV. (Original material) 4 1:0. mg, Died 55 days General tuberculosis, Fe (Chimpanzee 16)... 22 0°001 mg. Died 87 days General tuberculosis. % (Chimpanzee 22)... 24. 0:00001 mg. Died 107 days Severe general tuberculosis, Human Cultures. Hy25, ACT ae 1 1:0 mg. Died 50 days General tuberculosis, HHS 1 ab Wink 7 000001 mg, Died 92 days General tuberculosis. et Four pigs have been inoculated subcutaneously with culture from the two slightly-virulent viruses H 87. “W.D.” and H. 93. “C.D.” ; the doses were 40, 50 (in two cases), and 100 milligrammes. All the pigs were killed in good health in periods varying from 100 ,to 253 days; they had increased greatly in weight and had not shown any sign of illness during the experiment. In one of the pigs the disease was confined to the the nearest glands there were a few calcareous tuber- cles in the lungsand no signs of tuberculosis elsewhere. These experiments show that the human tubercle bacillus is not able to set up progressive tuberculosis in pigs. Other experiments performed by Cobbett* with this type of bacillus gave similar results ; four pigs were inoculated subcutaneously each with 50 milligrammes and one with 1 milligramme ; they were killed in good health after 2 to 3 months and each showed slight retrogressive tuberculosis. The pig, like the calf and goat therefore is very resistant to the human tubercle bacillus; it appears however to be slightly more susceptible than. the calf since disseminated lesions were more numerous and more frequently present. : None of the virulent cultures recently isolated from human lungs has been tested on pigs. Foe The experiments published in the 2nd Interim Report show however that severe general tuberculosis is very readily set up in pigs by the subcutaneous inoculation of bovine tubercle bacilli whether of human or animal origin. Four goats have been inoculated with cultures of uman tubercle bacilli, three subcutaneously and one intravenously, — One of the goats inoculated subcutaneously received 100 milligrammes of Virus H. 79. “J.N.”, and was killed in good health 106 days later ; it showed slight generalized retrogressive tuberculosis; another re- ceived 10 milligrarames of Virus H. 98. “B.R.” and showed when killed after 114 days a local lesion and miliary tubercles in the mamma with no disease else- where ; the third received 25 milligrammes of Virus H. 118. “F.C.” and when killed after 116 days had local tuberculosis and slight tuberculosis of the lungs only. © The goat inoculated intravenously received 2 milli- ‘grammes of Virus H. 115.‘‘N.G.”, and died in 41 days of tuberculous pneumonia ; the lungs were partly solid and reddish-grey and partly air-containing and beset with transparent grey tubercles ; the thoracic glands were much enlarged, reddish in colour, and showed on section translucent grey areas without caseation. or calcification ; there was no sign of disease anywhere else in the body. The human tubercle bacillus is incapable therefore of setting up progressive tuberculosis in the goat. No inoculations have recently been made into goats with cultures possessed of high virulence for the calf, The experiments however published in the