Tuberculosis and Acute general miliary tuberculosis / by G. Cornet ; edited, with additions by Walter B. James ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengel.

  • Cornet, G. (Georg), 1858-1915.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tuberculosis and Acute general miliary tuberculosis / by G. Cornet ; edited, with additions by Walter B. James ; authorized translation from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    and this belief has never since failed of a following among physicians, especially in certain countries. Laennec and Albers describe certain nodules, which from the description seem to have been anatomical tubercles, resulting from wounds received at the autopsies of tuber- culous bodies. Laennec says, according to Demme, that he cut him- self at such an autopsy, and thereafter began to feel sick and showed the first signs of phthisis. Nevertheless, the early attempts to pro- duce the disease by artificial infection were failures. Kortum (1789), Hebreart (1802), Salmade (1805), Lepelletier (1816), and others, had inoculated themselves, healthy children, and animals with scrofulous pus, but with no effect. Moreover since tubercle-like nodules are produced in the lung by the injection of quicksilver into the trachea and the bronchi (Cruveilhier), the theory of infection at first found no foothold. Klencke (1843) was the first to announce that he had injected tubercle-cells taken from miliary tubercles and from tuber- cles in the stage of gray infiltration into the jugular vein of rabbits, and that at the autopsy twenty-six weeks later he had found a wide- spread tuberculosis T)f the liver and lungs. It is undetermined whether Klencke himself appreciated the significance of his discovery; at any rate, his contribution was forgotten and remained without influence upon the theory of tuberculosis. The ingenious and broadly conceived experiments of Villemin had to a certain extent a brilliant result and raised a storm in the medical world at the time of their publication (December, 1865). He inocu- lated rabbits with matter taken from the gray and yellow tubercles of phthisical individuals, by subcutaneous injections into the tissue behind the ear, and found that they regularly developed tubercles in the lungs; whereas uninoculated rabbits, or those inoculated with pus, showed no trace of tuberculosis. This brought him to the conclusion that phthisis was a specific disease, virulent in type, and produced by an inoculable agent. He attained the same results later on by the injection of caseous material, of phthisical sputum, and of infectious material from a tuberculous cow. In spite of repeated corroboration, the researches of Villemin did not achieve universal recognition, for they were heavily counterbalanced by the authority of certain writers (Aufrecht, 1869, Talma, 1881, and others) who maintained that they had also produced tuberculosis in animals by the inoculation of non- tuberculous material, such as pus, particles of sponge, and so on. The confirmation of these researches would necessarily deprive the doctrine of specificity of all support. Further trials, however, by Ponfick (1869), Chauveau, Klebs (1873), Baumgarten (1880), and