Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/238

234 In view of these facts, it is not surprising to find that Koch and Schütz later failed to produce marked or general tubercular infection of cattle by feeding or inoculating directly into the circulation tuberculous materials and cultures of tubercle bacilli of human origin. That this result does not dispose of the entire question at issue, but leaves open the important consideration of the implantation of the more virulent bovine bacilli upon man was, of course, present in Koch's mind, and was met by him by emphasizing the infrequency with which primary intestinal tuberculosis, which is the form of tuberculosis presumably arising from ingested virulent tubercle bacilli, is encountered in human beings. The reports which have appeared since have tended to show that primary tuberculosis of the abdominal viscera, especially in children, is not so infrequent as Koch believed it, and the researches inspired by Koch's address have brought out the important fact, now based upon actual observation under the microscope, that tubercle bacilli may pass through the intact intestinal wall and reach, by means of the lymph current, the mesenteric glands; and have made it seem probable, also, that by entering or being carried into the blood vessels in the intestine the bacilli may be carried to the lungs. When all the known facts of food infection in tuberculosis are assembled, they make quite an imposing array, for they indicate, quite in opposition to the exclusive view expressed by Koch, that tubercle bacilli entering the body with food may be implanted upon the mucous membrane of the mouth, from which, probably, chiefly in the region of the tonsils, they may be carried to the lymphatic glands of the neck and adjacent parts where they develop and produce tubercular disease; or they become implanted upon the intestinal mucosa and pass the epithelial barrier without first causing disease there, and set up lesions in the mesenteric lymph nodes or even be transported by the blood or lymph to the distant lungs; or they may first multiply in the intestine, cause tubercular disease there, and then migrate further, involving the abdominal and thoracic organs.

If I have seemed to tarry too long over this aspect of my subject, I will ask you to consider for a moment in how far the endeavor to limit the spread of tuberculosis among the human race must be influenced by the avenues of infection to which the race is exposed. If we side with Koch in the view expressed in 1901, and reiterated just the other day in his Nobel-prize address, that, as he says, human tuberculosis and tuberculosis in cattle are so distinct from each other that the latter is not to be feared as transmissible to man, at least, as his last utterance puts it, not in a form which comes in consideration in regard to tuberculosis as a 'Volkskrankheit' or race disease, then it is only necessary to direct efforts to the suppression of tubercle bacilli of human origin. For, if the danger of infection of surroundings and