Is consumption contagious? : and can it be transmitted by means of food?

  • Clapp, Herbert C. (Herbert Codman), 1846-
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Is consumption contagious? : and can it be transmitted by means of food?. 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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    man at the International Medical Congress at Lon- don last summer because of his brilliant achievements in preventing anthrax, the fatal splenic fever in cat- tle, by inoculating its bacillus modified by cultivation, and thus producing the disease in a mild and harm- less form. Vaccination itself many now regard as simply inoculation with the bacillus of smallpox, modified by its transmission through the bovine race. The opinion seems to be rapidly gaining ground that the other eruptive fevers, which are most likely due to the growth within the body of minute parasites, generically called bacilli, may perhaps be forestalled at some future time by the designed production of very mild forms of them by the inoculation of their bacilli altered by cultivation. Dr. Koch, in his ex- periments hitherto, has only cultivated the tubercle bacillus in its original virulence; but of course now many other investigators, who think they can fore- cast the signs of the times, will attempt with eager- ness to cultivate these parasites in diminished inten- sity, and grapple, full of hope, with one of the greatest problems ever offered to the physician, —the preven- tion of consumption. Whether consumption can ever be prevented in this way is somewhat doubtful, we grieve to say. The analogy with small-pox is not a perfect one, because one attack of consumption, how- ever mild, surely does not confer immunity from future attacks, but on the contrary rather predisposes the victim to them. However, even if Koch's re- searches do not facilitate the prevention of the dis- ease by inoculation, they surely will do a great deal towards accomplishing the same object by enforcing on public attention the contagions nature of the dis- ease, and by warning people not to breathe in nor eat its germs.