On the nature, action, and therapeutic value of the active principles of tuberculin : an investigation / by William Hunter.

  • Hunter, William, 1861-1937.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature, action, and therapeutic value of the active principles of tuberculin : an investigation / by William Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    medial action is not the same as that which causes the local inflammation. According to my observations both these latter (the remedial and the inflammatory agents) are of albumose nature, the remedial substance constituting but a small proportion of the whole. In my opinion Koch has been led into error by attaching too much impor- tance to the fever of tuberculin. It is only in this way that I can explain his statement that his single active principle passes easily and quickly through parchment membrane. My observations show that this description applies to the substances which are mainly responsible for the fever, but certainly not to the albumoses, which are responsible for the remedial and inflammatory properties of tuberculin. I always employed dialysis to obtain the albumoses in their purest condition, and to free them from the fever-producing agents. The practical outcome of these observations is to establish that it is possible to free tuberculin, at least to a very great extent, from its fever-producing properties, and thus remove one of the barriers to its more extended application. To what extent it is also possible to dissociate its specific remedial action from its power of inducing local inflamma- tion is a point not so clearly established. I have expressed the opinion that the two actions are dissociable from each other, and are distinct in their character. Up to the pre- sent this is an opinion based solely on the differences observed clinically. Whether the distinction I have thus, for the present, drawn between the two actions will be confirmed pathologically, it must remain for future obser- vations to determine. So far as I can yet judge, the differ- ence in the action of the two substances is probably of this nature—that while the remedial substance acts mainly on cells, and only to a slight extent on vessels (possesses chimiotactic properties independent of, or in excess of,