On the treatment of tuberculous diseases in their surgical aspect : being the Harveian lectures for 1899 / by W. Watson Cheyne.

  • Cheyne, William Watson, Sir, 1852-1932.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the treatment of tuberculous diseases in their surgical aspect : being the Harveian lectures for 1899 / by W. Watson Cheyne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    those who uphold the non-hereditary view attribute this to greater frequency of infection by inhalation in infants as compared with infection by feeding. That view has always seemed to me a somewhat doubtful one. I cannot but think that the most probable and most natural mode of infection in infants is by feeding, more especially with tuberculous milk. Although I have myself formerly strongly opposed the view of the heredity of tuberculosis, I must confess that I do not now feel so positive about it as I was, and I cannot but think that in some cases of early tuberculosis the bacilli may have been present in the body at birth and have remained there in a quiescent state, probably in the bronchial glands, till some condition arose which was favourable to their spread. I do not wish positively to affirm this, but I must candidly confess that I do not feel quite so sure about this matter as I formerly did. However this may be, when the bacilli do enter the body and produce disease the first deposit is called the primary deposit; following on that fresh disease may appear elsewhere, which is spoken of as secondary, and which is generally due to spread of infection by the blood or lymph stream from the primary deposit. That this is so in the great majority of cases is highly probable, but it is also possible that some of these supposed secondary deposits have been formed in the same way as the first ; that is to say, not by bacilli coming from the primary deposit, but by fresh bacilli which have entered from without; under those circumstances the second lesion would be as much primary as the first. This question whether the tuberculous deposits with which we have to deal in surgery are primary or