Tuberculin treatment / by Clive Riviere and Egbert Morland.

Date:: 1912

Credit: Tuberculin treatment / by Clive Riviere and Egbert Morland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Cover
Title Page
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Cover

28/308 page 8

static condition of sensitiveness itself: we can see help in the focal element of the tuberculin reaction when it is set free, and also in the increase in anti- body content which follows it. '^I’he lysins would be of utility in “policing” the body, in de- stroying there and then any bacilU wandering out of a tubercular focus. In this way they would serve to p.otect the tissues most effectively from the deposit of fresh foci of infection. They might also assist the body-eells in taking up and removing the bacilh by phagocytic action, for it is commonly held that opsonic power is possessed by many or all antibodies as a sort of by-product of their action. We find then that sensitiveness to tubercle products is an important factor in immunity. It gives the body the power of dealing with tubercle bacilli introduced from without or already present within reach of the body fluids. But their destruction also leads to the liberation of toxins, causing, in the case of a tuberculin injection, the tuberculin reaction, or, in the case of auto- inoculation, the symptoms we associate with tubercular disease. Can anything but harm arise from the hberation of these toxic effects ? We have considered shortly the tubercuhn reaction and the divisibihty of its symptoms into local, general and focal. Now it is obvious that the general symptonn, whether the result of tuberculin administration or of auto-inocu- lation, can have no other than a deleterious action. Under their influence, as we know well, the body is soon reduced to conditions of marked illness and finally death. If this were the only action of the tuber-

Tuberculin treatment / by Clive Riviere and Egbert Morland.

Licence and re-use

Contents