468 ANNUAL REPORT OP THE Ofl. Doc. 



tuberculous intestinal lesions were as rare iu children as Koch's 

 statistics indicated, it was certainly true that tabes mesenterica ex- 

 isted in a considerable percentage of children who died from tuber- 

 culous disease without tubercle being found in any other part of the 

 body. 



When the mesenteric glands were thus aft'ected without any dis- 

 coverable intestinal lesion, the natural, and indeed, inevitable, in- 

 terpretation seemed to him to be that the tubercle bacilli had passed 

 through the intestinal raucous membrane without causing obvious 

 lesion in it, and had been arrested in the glands of the mesentery. It 

 was known that even typhoid bacilli, the essential place of develop- 

 ment of which was the intestinal mucous membrane, occasionally 

 passed through without producing the characteristic lesion. And 

 if this might occur with the typhoid bacilli, how much more likely 

 was such an occurence with tubercle bacilli? If this were so, Koch's 

 main argument fell to the ground. As regarded the experiments 

 which Koch had referred to of inoculating bovine animals with ma- 

 terial from the glands of ehildreti atTected with tabes meseoiterica, 

 the result being negative, these experiments had been but few; and 

 even were they more numerous, they would not, to his mind, be quite 

 conclusive. It might be that tubercle from milk in the intestines 

 might be so modified by passing through the human subject that 

 the bacilli iu the mesenteric glands, though derived from a bovine 

 animal, might be -no longer those of true bovine tubercle but bacilli 

 having the characters of human tubercle little disposed to develop 

 in cattle. The Congress would probably require a more searching 

 in(iuii'y into the subject before accepting this doctrine of the im- 

 munity of man to bovine tubercle. 



REPLY OF PROF. E. NOCARD TO PROF. KOCH. 



"1 consider it a great honor to salute, in the name of.Freuch bacteri- 

 ologists, the greatest bacteriologist of the whole world. To this 

 tribute of admiration and respect, I ask of this illustrious savant 

 permission to make public acknowledgement of the gratitude which 

 I expressed to him nearly ten years ago on an occasion never to 

 be forgotten, when I was able to judge of the elevation of his mind, 

 the nobility of his character, and the rare goodness of his heart.* 



\ communication from Koch is always an event; that of to-day 

 will be heard far and wide. Parts of it charm me and fill me with 

 content; other parts trouble me, they appear to me full of danger. 



♦ Allusion is here made to the sympathetic devotion shown by Prof. Kocli 

 t) the French Commission, composed of Messrs. Roux, Strauss, Nocard and 

 Thuiliier, sent to Egypt in 1893 to study the epidemic of cholera. It will be re- 

 membered that in 48 hours Thuiliier was carried off by the disease. 



