Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891
Various
Science -- Periodicals
This explains the remarkable phenomenon that in organs newly attacked
with tuberculosis, for instance in guinea pigs' spleen and liver,
which then are covered with gray nodules, numbers of bacilli are
found, whereas they are rare or wholly absent when the enormously
enlarged spleen consists almost entirely of whitish substance in a
condition of coagulation necrosis, such as is often found in cases of
natural death in tuberculous guinea pigs. The single bacillus cannot,
therefore, induce necrosis at a great distance, for as soon as
necrosis attains a certain extension the growth of the bacillus
subsides, and therewith the production of the necrotizing substance. A
kind of reciprocal compensation thus occurs, causing the vegetation of
isolated bacilli to remain so extraordinarily restricted, as, for
instance, in lupus and scrofulous glands.
In such cases the necrosis generally extends only to a part of the
cells, which then, with further growth, assume the peculiar form of
riesen zelle, or giant cells. Thus, in this interpretation, follow
first the explanation Weigert gives of the production of giant cells.
If now one increased artificially in the vicinity of the bacillus the
amount of necrotizing substance in the tissue, the necrosis would
spread a greater distance. The conditions of nourishment for the
bacillus would thereby become more unfavorable than usual.
In the first place the tissue which had become necrotic over a large
extent would decay and detach itself, and where such were possible
would carry off the inclosed bacilli and eject them outwardly, so far
disturbing their vegetation that they would much more speedily be
killed than under ordinary circumstances.
It is just in looking at such changes that the effect of the remedy
appears to consist. It contains a certain quantity of necrotizing
substance, a correspondingly large dose of which injures certain
tissue elements even in a healthy person, and perhaps the white blood
corpuscles or adjacent cells, thereby producing fever and a
complication of symptoms, whereas with tuberculous patients a much
smaller quantity suffices to induce at certain places, namely, where
tubercle bacilli are vegetating and have already impregnated the
adjacent region with the same necrotizing matter, more or less
extensive necrosis of the cells, with the phenomena in the whole
organism which result from and are connected with it.
For the present, at least, it is impossible to explain the specific
influence which the remedy, in accurately defined doses, exercises
upon tuberculous tissue, and the possibility of increasing the doses
with such remarkable rapidity, and the remedial effects which have
unquestionably been produced under not too favorable circumstances.
Of the consumptive patients whom he described as temporarily cured,
two have been returned to the Moabit Hospital for further observation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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