The curability and treatment of pulmonary phthisis / Tr. and ed. by Montagu Lubbock.

  • Jaccoud, S. (Sigismond), 1830-1913.
Date:
1885
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The curability and treatment of pulmonary phthisis / Tr. and ed. by Montagu Lubbock. 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.

    14/464 (page viii)
    Vlli PREFACE. cause of the disease, there are strong reasons for such a con- clusion. The idea that tuberculosis is an infectious disease has been long held. The author of this work was of that opinion, and believed the infective agent not only to pass in some way from person to person, but that auto- or self- infection was possible, the virus being disseminated through the body from pre-existing caseous or tuberculous deposits which contained it. The nature of the agent was, however, quite unknown to him, nor could he describe its size, con- ditions of life, etc., as can now be done. Nor was the presence of such a contagium considered necessary. Malnutrition, understood in its most general sense, was the chief factor in the liability to tuberculosis, and the actual production of tubercle, whether it be an exudation or cellular forma- tion, was regarded as due to an irritative process termed phymatogenous (tubercle-producing) irritation, or to actual inflammation of the lung. Though regarding every form of phthisis as curable, he looked upon the so-called inflammatory forms as specially so by means of fibrous transformation of the tubercle, the result to be specially sought in all cases of this disease. With respect to infection, the disease was supposed to be communicable by means of inoculation, the inhalation of air containing particles derived from a tuberculous patient—the milk and possibly the meat of cows affected by tuberculosis— and on the title-page of his remarks upon The Etiology of Phthisis is the following chorus of the possible supporters of Dr. Koch :— What is consumption ? The bacillus. What is the bacillus ? Consumption. But what causes consumption ? Why, the bacillus. Bnt what causes the bacillus ? Consumption.