The germ origin of tubercle, illustrated from the history of phthisis in Victoria / by William Thomson.

  • Thomson, William, 1943-2017.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The germ origin of tubercle, illustrated from the history of phthisis in Victoria / by William Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    which they were unwisely misled to contemn. After relating the leading facts adduced by Dr. Koch, they sensibly observe :•— It is evident from this that consumptive people are by no means the safe companions they have hitherto been regarded. The facts we have mentioned should suggest precautions which, up to the present time, have been considered unnecessary. Care should be taken to destrov all organisms in the matter thrown off the lungs of patients by immersion in boiling water or otherwise, before it can dry and be taken up by the atmosphere. We should imagine, moreover, that there must be considerable danger in sleeping with people suffering from phthisis. (The Melbourne Argus, 12th July, 1882.) To assert that the precautions against specific infection have not been hitherto thought necessary, is true enough. And whose fault was it ? The contagion theory which had not commended itself to English physicians generally did no more commend itself to Colonial physicians particularly. To think for themselves would be beyond all conservative discipline. But to say that such precautions have never before been declared to be required, is very far from true, as the columns of their own journal bear witness. For example, in the