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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    nected with its local inflammatory action are those in- cidental to the softening and absorption of tuberculous tissue, more especially the danger which Virchow’s obser- vations, amply confirmed as they are by clinical observa- tion, have conclusively proved, in my opinion, to be a real, although fortunately apparently a rare, one—namely, the increased activity and further dissemination of active bacilli. The general effects include, in addition to fever, such general phenomena as headache, drowsiness, feelings of sickness, and malaise, aching pains in back and limbs, and occasionally severe depressant action on heart, indicated by weak and rapid pulse. Most of these unpleasant effects are as frequently noteworthy by their absence as by their presence, if the dose be small, so that the dangers connected with them might well be passed over as of relatively little importance. These general effects have, however, in my opinion, a significance of their own, apart from any dangers that may accompany them ; they indicate, in my opinion, in a special manner, the action of an albuminous poison. This is particularly true of the nausea, aching pains in back, and weak action of heart, which are perhaps the most characteristic. These symptoms find their closest parallel, in my experience, in the similar effects occasionally seen to follow the intra- venous injection of defibrinated blood—blood, that is to say, containing various albuminous bodies, including cer- tain of Wooldridge’s “ tissue fibrinogens.” The fever is, however, by far the most constant and characteristic phenomenon next to the local inflammation itself. It is so striking as at first sight to appear to have an altogether special relation to the more specific local action of the substance. This is, I judge, the view held by Koch, for he attaches an altogether special importance to