On latent and recurrent infection, and on subinfection / J. George Adami.

  • Adami, J. George (John George), 1862-1926.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On latent and recurrent infection, and on subinfection / J. George Adami. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the only adequate explanation is that years previously there had been the primary infection, followed by arrest and apparently per- fect health, and then under conditions of strain or bad surroundings the disease lights up again and too often proceeds to a fatal termi- nation. Let me quote for you a family history known to me. In this there was no previous record of the disease, but each summer the family went to the sea-side, occupying year after year a hab- itant cottage. Subsequent enquiries brought out that the habitant and his family occupied the guest rooms during the winter months, and that one after another all the members of that French Canadian family succumbed to tuberculosis—a history all too common among the habitants of Quebec province. Of the English Canadian family which occupied the cottage in the summer, two of the children— girls—died young, the one certainly of malignant tuberculosis, the other of an obscure illness lasting several months, possibly tuber- culous. All the others reached maturity. There appeared to be nothing wrong with them over and above a liability to catch colds easily. But as the family dispersed, one, a girl, presented pulmo- nary tuberculosis after child birth, another who had been specially athletic as a school boy manifested tuberculous pleurisy and lung disease after two or three years of office work, while another boy after an attack of suspicious pleurisy while a student died in early manhood from renal tuberculosis. In each case it was after some strain or the action of some predisposing cause that the disease showed itself. Quite the simplest and most rational explanation is that the primary infection occurred in childhood when all were exposed to the action of a common causative agent,—house infec- tion—that following upon this there occurred a long period of la- , teney, with relighting of the disease under the influence of unfavor- able environment. Now-a-days, without shadow of doubt, the Tuberculo-euta- neous reaction is demonstrating to us that progressively as we pass from early childhood to youth and early adult life a greater and greater proportion of all individuals harbour the tubercle bacillus until by the 19th year scarce 5 per cent of the population is free from the disease. At the recent International Congress of Tubercu- losis. Professor Calmette of Lille reported that during six months in 1911 he had submitted 1226 children to the cutaneous tuberculin » test. These children were not attending hospital or dispensary— they were regarded as healthy. He obtained the following results:— Age. Number tested. Infected 0 to 1 yr. 273 9% 1 . . 2 .. 145 22% 2 . . 5 206 54% 5 .. 15 366 81% Over 15 .. 236 88% \