Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of ContentsLord, John
Philosophy
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era: A Supplementary Volume, by Recent Writers, as Set Forth in the Preface and Table of Contents
Lord, John
History
Within about a decade of the close of the century, Robert Koch, whose
discoveries and ingenious studies in bacteriology had brought him
world-wide renown, announced that he had produced a derivative of the
tubercle bacillus, which he termed tuberculin, that he thought might
prove curative of tuberculous disease. It was to be injected beneath the
skin. If the subject was really tuberculous, he would "react" by
manifesting a certain degree of fever, and repeated injections would
bring about elimination of the tuberculous deposits and thus effect a
cure. The world was carried away with such an announcement coming from
such a man, and it was thoroughly believed that at last "the great white
plague," consumption, was to be conquered. Tuberculin did, indeed, cure
certain minor forms of tuberculous disease, such as the skin affection
known as lupus, but it soon became evident that it was almost impotent
in the treatment of pulmonary consumption. It has, however, served to
enable the veterinarian to make out the existence of tuberculous disease
in cattle at an early stage of its course, and it is probable that by
the slaughter of cattle thus found to be tuberculous much infection of
human beings has been prevented.
Tuberculin failed of its prime purpose, but it does seem to have marked
the initiative of a campaign against consumption which has already
proved of incalculable benefit, and bids fair to put that omnipresent
disease toward the foot of the list of causes of death. We have made
substantial advances in our knowledge of the disease, and we no longer
regard it as incurable. We have learned that it is communicable from one
person to another, but also that its communication can easily be
prevented, so that there is no reason to shrink from association with
tuberculous persons. We have learned, too, that consumption in one's
progenitors, immediate or remote, hardly makes it even probable that he
himself is doomed to suffer with it; the only tuberculous heredity that
we now recognize is that of defective ability to withstand the
infection, and even this we regard as in most instances readily
surmountable. We have learned, furthermore, that pulmonary tuberculous
disease is by no means so fatal as it was formerly esteemed, for men
whose business it is to make great numbers of post-mortem examinations,
such as coroners' physicians and hospital pathologists, assure us that
in a very large percentage of cases of death from other causes they find
indubitable signs of past tuberculous disease of the lungs which had
ceased its activity--been, in fact, cured, either spontaneously or by
medical intervention. Such intervention, it has been abundantly proved,
is altogether likely to be successful if it is of the right sort and
employed early. There is, to be sure, no cure-all. Powerful as the
climatic treatment is, it must be supplemented by measures accurately
adapted to the individual case, and failure to comprehend this fact
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