Tuberculosis of bones and joints.

  • Senn, Nicholas, 1844-1908.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tuberculosis of bones and joints. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    all of them except one, and this was a case of tubercular abscess of the vertebri© in which no bacilli could be found in the pus, but inoculation experiments yielded positive results. Castro-SofRa ( Recherches experimentales sur la tuber- culose des Os. These de Paris, 1885) was one of the first to make a careful methodical search for the bacillus in tubercular lesions of bone. As the result of quite an extensive clinical inves- tigation he assures us that he never failed in demonstrating the presence of the microbe, not only by microscopical examination, but also by inoculation experiments. In this connection it is well to mention incidentally that Schuchardt and Krause {Fortscliritte der Medicin, May, 1883) have examined specimens from ibrty cases of surgical tuberculosis in the clinics at Halle and Breslau ; they comprise:— Synovial tuberculosis, 10 cases. Osseous tuberculosis 3 Glandular tuberculosis, 3 Cold abscesses, 14 Tubercle of muscle, 1 case. Tubercle of tongue, 1 Tubercle of testicle, 1 Tubercle of female genitalia, .... 1 Miscellaneous, 6 cases. Total, 40 In every one of these cases they found the characteristic bacilli. Schlegtendal ( Ueber das Vorkommen der Tuberkelbacil- len im Eiter. Fortschritte der Medicin, B. i, S. 537) exam- ined iive hundred and twenty specimens of pus from tubercular abscesses, and found bacilli present in about 75 per cent, of the cases. As the bacilli are never as numerous in tubercular pus as in the granulation tissue, there can be but little doubt that in the remaining 25 per cent, of the cases they were present, but were not discovered; or, perhaps, that in some of them the primary lesion was not of a tubercular nature. Experiments have repeatedly shown that pus from tubercular lesions in which no bacilli could be found produced, when injected into the