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.

  • Heron, G. A. (George Allan), 1845-1915
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.

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    KOCH’S RESEARCHES ON TUBERCULOSIS. Read before the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society, on December, 1st, 1882. Deposited with the President of the Society, November 3rd, 1882. [ Reprinted from the “ Glasgow Medical Journal” for February, 1883.} On the 24th of March, 1882, in a paper read before the Physiological Society of Berlin, Dr. Robert Koch claimed to have established, by experiment and by observation, the existence of a micro-organism which is associated with tubercle, and not only associated with tubercle, but, ac cording to Koch, the cause of all tubercle. This organism is a bacterium of the kind known as a bacillus, and it is, consequently, rod-shaped. In length it varies from about 3-0W to Toj-oo in-, and its breadth is about £th of its length. In looking at a specimen of these bacilli, it will be seen that certain of them contain spores, two to four, ranged along the length of the organism. In attempting to give an outline of some of the points on which Koch lays especial emphasis in the lecture referred to above, it is obvious that attention must be given solely to what is there stated. Since that date no observations have been published tending to disprove Dr. Koch's work. On the other hand, the bacillus described by him has been found by several observers in the tissues and in the sputa of persons whose conditions of disease would have suggested to any clinician, of ordinary experience, the probability of the presence of tubercle in the patient. It must, then, be admitted, that we have now to deal with a new fact which characterises, by the presence of these organisms, certain cases of disease of well known type, about the exact clini¬ cal significance of which there is, even now, no inconsider¬ able difference of opinion. For those who find themselves justified in accepting Koch’s results as true, all difficulties about the nature of these cases must cease, as soon as it is found that the patients concerned harbour in their tissues, or in their secretions or excretions, this bacillus of tubercle. The bacillus is demonstrated in tissues by employing the process first described by Professor Ehrlich. Koch has